6 Popular Culture

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6 Popular Culture

Chapter Overview

Teenagers are uniquely situated to engage in a discussion on country of Cash and the shine of Metallica. Most students feel pop culture. They wield the power to create trends, and yet inherent authority on the topic of pop culture, which can lead they are targets of larger forces that market those trends. to increased engagement and academic risk-taking, especially While they may be experts in the pop culture of today, from those students who are reticent to wade into the deep students have limited knowledge of the trends of yesteryear— waters of topics such as justice or money. For these reasons, those faded fads better known to their decrepit old English and for the opportunity to bond with students over music, TV, teachers who still recall the original (and rightful!) Trolls and and fashion, you may consider using this chapter at the begin- Transformers; the high-waisted pant and high-top sneaker; the ning of the school year.

CENTRAL ESSAY: JAMES MCBRIDE, HIP HOP PLANET (2007)

Length 4,243 words

Difficulty Moderate: highly engaging topic, accessible language, lengthy, implicit claims, loosely defined rhetorical situation

Topics music, cultural identity, commercialism, class Addressed

Instructional Part narrative, part argument, McBride’s essay examines hip hop as a vehicle of culture. He connects the Tips American roots of the genre with its modern branches and extends the examination all the way to the fruits borne in places around the world. McBride describes his former position on hip hop at the beginning of the piece and then walks readers through his discoveries on the topic before making his current position known. In essence, McBride reveals the evolution of his position on hip hop as he describes the evolution of the genre itself. This unique form of organization can be used to demonstrate how a writer’s purpose informs the arrangement of the elements of argument. McBride’s variation in syntax mirrors the variable rhythms of the genre. Short, simple sentences pop amid sensory imagery and a powerful array of descriptive verbs. In addition to these stylistic traits, this piece is an exemplar of the following rhetorical strategies: • shifts in point of view •anecdote • strategic use of expert opinion

CLASSIC ESSAY: MARK TWAIN, CORN-PONE OPINIONS (1923)

Length 1,922 words

Difficulty Challenging: unfamiliar words, challenging syntax, abstract concepts

Topics conformity, popular opinion, influence on original thought, community Addressed

Instructional Ah, Twain. Who else can make a joke about nudity sound so sophisticated? While not very long, this essay is Tips dense and populated with a thick forest of vocabulary. It may help to plan instruction around three sections: first, the opening anecdote (paras. 1–4); second, the extension of the argument (paras. 5–10); third, the listing of examples and the final conclusion (paras. 11–13). This piece is an exemplar of the following rhetorical strategies: • use of humor • anecdote • inductive and deductive logic • ethos

6-A The Language of Composition

Text Length Difficulty Topics addressed Rhetorical Highlights

Ray Bradbury, The 840 words Challenging: short, obscure role of the media, ethos, tone, allusion, Affluence of Despair references, jeremiad American culture, rhetorical question, (1998) narcissism metaphor, claims of value and policy

David Denby, High- 2,834 words Challenging: commonly known American movies, inductive logic, claims of School Confidential: subject with dated allusions, stereotypes, art value, use of example Notes on Teen Movies analysis of the elements of a imitating life, high (1999) genre, evaluation of the genre’s school cliques impact on society

Emily Nussbaum, The 3,862 words Moderate: accessible language, role and history of use of sources and Price Is Right: What familiar subject, industry television, influence examples, ethos, deductive Advertising Does to TV terminology, lengthy, context of advertising logic, claims of value (2015) provided for dated examples, contemporary examples

Troy Patterson, How the 1,486 words Moderate: accessible length, motorcycle jacket, imagery to establish mood, Motorcycle Jacket Lost some unfamiliar vocabulary, fads in fashion, ethos, pathos, first-hand Its Cool and Found It terminology related to fashion teenage culture evidence Again (2015)

Hua Hsu, How to Listen 1,455 words Moderate: short, familiar experience of ethos, first-hand evidence, to Music (2016) subject, frequent references to listening to music, use of sources, claims of another text being reviewed, modern ways of value abstract topic finding music, popular opinion

Angelica Jade Bastién, 1,953 words Accessible: engaging subject, superhero movies, claims of fact and value, Have Superheroes Killed contemporary references, clear definition of a “Star,” deductive logic, open the Movie Star? (2015) position influence of thesis Hollywood and comic books on culture

Mark Greif, Get Off the 2,443 words Challenging: lengthy, spans a American culture, persuasive appeals, claims Treadmill: Living Well in wide range of topics, subject not consumerism, of fact and value, the Age of Plenty (2016) necessarily immediately relevant advertising, health stylistically rich, shifts to students’ lives and fitness in tone

Justin Peters, The Ballad 2,226 words Moderate: lengthy, in-depth influence of cable use of second-hand of Balloon Boy (2016) analysis of a single example to news, media and evidence, claims of fact, support position, accessible entertainment inductive logic, shifts in language tone, sarcasm

Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize 825 words Accessible: short and sweet, music and literature, first-hand evidence, ethos, Banquet Speech (2017) musical icon, straightforward artistic influences, historical example rhetorical situation intersection of high and low culture

Teacher’s Edition 6-B

Text Medium Difficulty Subject Rhetorical Highlights

John Singer Sargent, painting Challenging: most students will mother and her children, color harmonies, linear Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her require additional context family relationships, wealth perspective, overlap Children (1896) (particularly new vs. old money), assimilation

Andy Warhol, Myths painting Moderate: well-known artist, but pop culture, iconic Americana, monochromatic harmo- (1981) some students may need addi- high and low culture nies, value, pattern, tional context for some of the shape subjects

from “Formation” music photo Accessible: widely recognized Southern culture, Light, linear perspec- video (2016) and highly engaging subject re- appropriation, female tive, complementary empowerment, hip hop music colors,

CONVERSATION: THE VALUE OF CELEBRITY ACTIVISM

In a world where everyone carries a potential platform for activ- • Andres Jimenez, Why Celebrity Activism Does More ism in his or her pocket, students are keen to examine soci- Harm Than Good: Following a persuasive anecdote, this ety’s reactions to celebrities who speak out on controversial article criticizes the actions of some of the most well- topics. These sources bring together many views on the issue known celebrity activists and offers words of caution to of celebrity activism and draw upon both older examples of outsiders who seek to take on international causes. celebrity activists, such as John Lennon, and contemporary • Jeffrey Kluger, Jim Carrey, Please Shut Up about figures, like Bono. The questions raised in these texts guide Vaccines: Acerbic and sarcastic, this column lays into students away from the bilateral question of whether celebri- three celebrities who spoke out against vaccinations and ties should speak out or take action, and leads them to analyze calls out the consequences of their actions. the complex nature of the relationship between celebrity and • Georgia Cole, Ben Radley, and Jean-Benoît Falisse, society and how public figures use their social influence. Who Really Benefits from Celebrity Activism?: This article uses multiple sources to support the authors’ position • C. Wright Mills, from The Power Elite: This excerpt from that celebrities should not “obscure the complex dynamics Mills’s most well-known work on America’s rich and of power and socioeconomic relations in favour of a powerful explores the underpinnings of the cult of celebrity. simple, catch all, solution.” • Dave Gilson, Dr. Clooney, I Presume? (illustration): Rich • Joshua Ostroff, Beyoncé and Why Celebrity Activists in irony, this image—taken from an online interactive Matter: This piece takes a strong position on the impor- map—shows various celebrities’ activities, such as tance of celebrities who voice their opinions, connecting “Acquired a child,” in each African country. fame to public opinion and to public policy. • Brad Knickerbocker, West Memphis Three: Internet • Jay Kaspian Kang, Should Athletes Stick to Sports?: Campaign, Hollywood Drove Their Release: This article Occasioned by the public protests of NFL players who highlights how celebrity intervention led to the release of knelt during the national anthem, this piece argues that three men who were imprisoned for murder on circumstan- politics has always been present in American sports. tial evidence nearly thirty years ago.

6-C The Language of Composition

Purpose Tasks Time*

1. Introduce Engage students’ interest in this topic with a near-universally known figure: Beyoncé. 1 class period Chapter Theme: Show students the still-frame image from her “Formation” music video (p. 367) as a way to Popular Culture begin discussing Beyoncé’s role in pop culture, and pop culture’s role in society in general. To widen the discussion, ask students to read the introduction to the chapter (p. 300) and answer the questions posed in caption that accompanies the picture on that page, using a person or genre they consider to be part of pop culture today.

2. Entry Text: James McBride’s essay, “Hip Hop Planet” (p. 301), can be used to demonstrate the way a 2-3 class periods Central Essay writer analyzes and evaluates a movement in culture, such as hip hop. Its length lends itself to scaffolding: you can model an annotated reading with the first two sections, guide students through the next few sections, and then ask students to work independently on the remaining sections of the text. To connect the discussion on Beyoncé with this essay, consider asking students Q4 from Questions for Discussion (p. 311).

3. Establish Skills: Hone in on students’ ability to understand how rhetorical strategies connect to the 2 class periods Other Voices rhetorical situation by examining a text with a clearly defined occasion, audience, or speaker. For students who need an approachable text, consider using Bob Dylan’s “Nobel Prize Banquet Speech” (p. 359). Hua Hsu’s essay “How to Listen to Music” (p. 339) is a natural next text for students ready for the challenge of reading about more abstract and philosophical concepts related to music, art, and pop culture. Students can use these texts to analyze how the writers’ word choice, imagery, and sentence structure demonstrates an awareness of the rhetorical situation.

4. Deepen Skills: Revisit the still from the “Formation” music video (p. 367) and use it to lead into the 2-3 class periods Visual Texts analysis of “Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children” (p. 363). Using both texts, students can answer Exploring the Text Q2 and Q4 (p. 363), and engage in a discussion on the influence of the rhetorical situation on technique and meaning.

5. AP® Exam If your students are ready for a full-length, timed passage, you may consider using 1 class period Preparation: Question 2 from the 2017 exam, which asks students to analyze a speech with a clearly Rhetorical defined occasion and audience. Alternatively, if students need a measured approach, you Analysis can assess their skills of analysis by allowing them to choose three or four of the questions from the McBride Questions on Rhetoric and Style (p. 312) to which they can compose developed and text-supported answers.

6. Reader’s The other selections in this chapter relate to various aspects of pop culture: art, fashion, 2-3 class periods Choice: Other movies, advertising, and even the role of media as a form of entertainment. Establish the Voices same assignment and form(s) of assessment for all students, but allow individuals to select one of the other selections from this chapter to read and use for the assignment(s). Here are some suggestions for perfectly paired prose: ••Accessible: For the film aficionados in your class, you can recommend “Have Superheroes Killed the Movie Star?” by Angelica Jade Bastién (p. 344). ••Moderate: TV buffs will appreciate the points raised by Emily Nussbaum in “The Price Is Right” (p. 328), which deals with the art of television and influence of advertising. ••Challenging: Mark Greif’s essay “Get Off the Treadmill” (p. 349) weaves together many threads found within this chapter: public opinion, trends, advertising, and media.

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Teacher’s Edition 6-D

7. Deepen Skills: Students will be challenged by Twain’s writing, so reading “Corn-Pone Opinions” (p. 313) 2–3 class periods Classic Essay in class with students is highly advised. The wraparound notes for this text provide guidance on where to slow down or interrupt the reading in order to examine Twain’s development of the argument in key places. Twain’s points can serve as a jumping-off point into other discussions as well: • Accessible to Moderate: Engage students in a discussion on trends by analyzing Andy Warhol’s “Myths” (p. 365) and Troy Patterson’s “How the Motorcycle Jacket Lost Its Cool and Found It Again” (p. 336) • Moderate to Challenging: Consider discussing how journalism influences public opinion by pairing Twain’s essay with Ray Bradbury’s “The Affluence of Despair” (p. 318) and “The Ballad of Balloon Boy” by Justin Peters (p. 355).

8. AP® Exam You may choose to help students prepare for writing an argumentative essay by holding a 1–3 class periods Preparation: fishbowl discussion on the topic the day(s) before the timed writing. Doing so would help Argument students clarify their ideas and hear other perspectives before they are confronted with the challenge of expressing those ideas through writing. Related to “Corn-Pone Opinions,” the prompt you assign may be Q1 or Q2 from “Suggestions for Writing” (p. 317), or you may choose a prompt with a more thematic approach, using one of the Suggestions for Writing found at the end of the chapter on p. 392.

9. AP® Exam The first day, students can read and answer AP®-exam style questions related to “Hip Hop 2 class periods Preparation: Planet” (p. 301) and “Corn-Pone Opinions” (p. 313). The next day, return the marked Multiple Choice answer sheets to them, which should have the missed questions marked. Provide students with the correct answers, and then, using the questions they missed, ask them to answer the following questions: Why is your answer incorrect? Why is the correct answer correct? Students can check their rationales against those included on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

10. Working with Introduce this conversation by using the image of Sacheen Littlefeather accepting Marlon 3 class periods Sources: Brando’s Oscar at the Academy Awards (p. 300). Allow time for students to read the Conversation sources in this chapter’s Conversation on The Value of Celebrity Activism (p. 368). Have students demonstrate their understanding of the various perspectives by using sentence frames such as those found in Chapter 3 (p. 72) or by creating a graphic organizer such as the one from Chapter 4 (p. 136).

11. AP® Exam Provide students with 15 minutes in class to read and annotate the sources. Collect this 1–3 class periods Preparation: work at the end of the period. The next day, students can use the class period to compose Synthesis their timed synthesis essays, using the source material they previously annotated.

*Based on a 50-minute class period

6-E The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06Leaf_pp1.indd 5 22/03/18 11:51 AM Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06Leaf_pp1.indd 6 22/03/18 11:51 AM 6 Popular Culture

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Teacher’s Edition 299

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 299 22/03/18 11:55 AM 6 opular culture is a term that once characterized mass-produced or lowbrow culture: pop Popular Culture Pmusic, potboilers and page-turners, movies, comics, advertising, radio, and television. Its audience was the masses. Opposite popular culture were highbrow forms of entertainment: opera, fine art, classical music, traditional theater, and literature. These were the realm of the wealthy and educated classes. Today, the line between high and pop culture has blurred. Pop culture is often at the leading edge of what will become established culture. For example, the 1980s graffitist Jean-Michel Basquiat is now considered a leading figure in contemporary art. Popular culture moves through our world at warp speed. Rap music and mash-ups sample and remix current and past albums. Celebrity gossip in the morning is the talk-show host’s monologue at night. Homemade videos are posted on the Internet, become cultural phenomena overnight, and are just as quickly forgotten. Albums and movies are exchanged on peer-to-peer networks months before they are offi- cially released. What does this onslaught of entertainment and information mean? Bettmann/Getty Images These days, most people realize

When Marlon Brando won the 1973 Academy Award for Best that pop culture asks many of the same Actor, he sent Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather questions that high culture does: Does it to refuse it on his behalf. At the awards ceremony, Littlefeather read part of a speech written by Brando that protested the say something new? Does it tell us about mistreatment of Native Americans. ourselves? Popular culture also spawns What does such a gesture suggest about the new questions: What is pop? Should intersection of popular culture and activism? What role do you believe celebrities play in bringing about pop culture respect its roots? What is social change? the relationship among pop culture, politics, and commerce? Do commercial interests control what is offered to the public, or does old- fashioned word of mouth still tell us what’s hot and what’s not? The selections in this chapter are about media that you can access. Listen to the music, watch the films and TV shows, and look at the art. The connections made in this chapter prompt a conversation between the past and the present; enter that conversation, consider both, and imagine the future.

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BUILDING CONTEXT CLOSE READING Students will likely enjoy discuss- mainly of college graduates. The first four paragraphs contain ing McBride’s take on rap music, Students may also enjoy many readily identifiable syntacti- and this is a good piece for exploring — and being challenged cal and other stylistic discussing audience. They may to articulate — why they like, or moves — italics, repetitions, frag- hear their parents echoed in his don’t like, rap music. Students ments, colloquialisms, complex voice; indeed, McBride’s audi- can access the National sentences followed by simple ence is more likely students’ Geographic website for the ones — and would be fruitful for parents, since the piece was photos that accompanied the rhetorical analysis. Ask students published in National Geographic, article when it was printed in to analyze how the language of whose readership is composed 2007. the paragraphs characterizes the speaker.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 301 22/03/18 11:55 AM 6 slapped. They lived less than a mile from us moorings in every society it has permeated. In Popular Culture in the South Bronx. They had no journalism Brazil, rap rivals samba in popularity. In China, degrees. No money. No credibility. What they teens spray-paint graffiti on the Great Wall. In did have, however, was talent. France it has been blamed, unfairly, for the worst BUILDING CONTEXT Earlier that night, somebody tossed a record civil unrest that country has seen in decades. on the turntable, which sent my fellow students Its structure is unique, complex, and at times You may want to ask students to stumbling onto the dance floor, howling with bewildering. Whatever music it eats becomes part listen to the Sugar Hill Gang’s delight, and made me, a jazz lover, cringe. It of its vocabulary, and as the commercial world falls “Rapper’s Delight” and discuss sounded like a broken record. It was a version of into place behind it to gobble up the powerful slop why it could prompt the reaction an old hit record called “Good Times,” the same in its wake, it metamorphoses into the Next Big McBride describes. How does four bars looped over and over. And on top of Thing. It is a music that defies definition, yet defines this nearly 40-year-old song this loop, a kid spouted a rhyme about how he our collective societies in immeasurable ways. To compare to contemporary hip was the best disc jockey in the world. It was many of my generation, despite all attempts to hop? You might suggest students think about a range of music by called “Rapper’s Delight.” I thought it was the exploit it, belittle it, numb it, classify it, and analyze artists such as Cardi B, Kendrick most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. More ridic- it, hip hop remains an enigma, a clarion call, a cry Lamar, Kanye West, Jay-Z, ulous than Bill slapping that stranger. of “I am” from the youth of the world. We’d be wise, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Bill survived that evening, but in many ways, 5 I suppose, to start paying attention. or Drake. I did not. For the next 26 years, I high-stepped past that music the way you step over a crack Burning Man in the sidewalk. I heard it pounding out of cars Imagine a burning man. He is on fire. He runs and alleyways from Paris to Abidjan, yet I never into the room. You put out the flames. Then listened. It came rumbling out of boomboxes another burning man arrives. You put him out from Johannesburg to Osaka, yet I pretended and go about your business. Then two, three, not to hear. I must have strolled past the corner four, five, ten appear. You extinguish them all, of St. James Place and Fulton Street in my native send them to the hospital. Then imagine no one Brooklyn where a fat kid named Christopher bothers to examine why the men caught fire in Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, stood amusing the first place. That is the story of hip hop.

his friends with rhyme, a hundred times, yet It is a music dipped in the boiling caul- 10 I barely noticed. I high-stepped away from that dron of race and class, and for that reason it is music for 26 years because it was everything clouded with mystics, snake oil salesmen, two- I thought it was, and more than I ever dreamed bit scholars, race-baiters, and sneaker salesmen, it would be, but mostly, because it held all professing to know the facts, to be “real,” everything I wanted to leave behind. when the reality of race is like shifting sand, In doing so, I missed the most important dependent on time, place, circumstance, and cultural event in my lifetime. who’s telling the history. Here’s the real story: Not since the advent of swing jazz in the In the mid-1970s, New York City was nearly TEACHING IDEA 1930s has an American music exploded across the broke. The public school system cut funding for world with such overwhelming force. Not since the arts drastically. Gone were the days when Students could research and the Beatles invaded America and Elvis packed up you could wander into the band room, rent a debate McBride’s claims in para- his blue suede shoes has a music crashed against clarinet for a minimal fee, and march it home to graph 8 about the cultural impact the world with such outrage. This defiant culture squeal on it and drive your parents nuts. of music. You might ask them to of song, graffiti, and dance, collectively known The kids of the South Bronx and Harlem research four or more ways that as hip hop, has ripped popular music from its came up with something else. In the summer jazz in the 1930s or Elvis in the 1950s or the Beatles in the 1960s changed American culture — and 302 you could also ask them to debate whether punk in the 1970s had an equivalent impact, though McBride does not discuss this in his essay. Students could CLOSE READING compare those eras to defend, BUILDING CONTEXT challenge, or qualify McBride’s You might pause after paragraph Students may or may not notice central claim about hip hop. 10 to ask students to analyze the that the historical canon McBride meaning of the “burning man” references in paragraph 11 is metaphor. What details from later exclusively male. You might ask in the section help to develop its them to research some of the meaning? women who contributed to the birth of hip hop, including radio DJ Lady B and record label owner Sylvia Robinson. You might open a discussion of gender in McBride’s essay as a whole, since he does not refer to many female artists.

302 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 302 22/03/18 11:55 AM McBride of 1973, at 1595 East 174th Street in the Bronx mix tapes out of the back of station wagons. River Houses, a black teenager named Afrika “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang — the Bambaataa stuck a speaker in his mother’s song I first heard at that face-slapping party in

first-floor living room window, ran a wire to the Harlem — broke the music onto radio in 1979. Hip Hop Planet turntable in his bedroom, and set the housing That is the short history. project of 3,000 people alight with party music. The long history is that spoken-word music CHECK FOR At the same time, a Jamaican teenager named made its way here on slave ships from West UNDERSTANDING Kool DJ Herc was starting up the scene in the Africa centuries ago: Ethnomusicologists trace Students could discuss the East Bronx, while a technical whiz named hip hop’s roots to the dance, drum, and song of rhetorical functions of the intro- Grandmaster Flash was rising to prominence West African griots, or storytellers, its pairing of duction of an outside source in a couple of miles south. The Bronx became a word and music the manifestation of the painful paragraph 14. How does it music magnet for Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, journey of slaves who survived the middle pas- appeal to ethos? To what extent Dominicans, and black Americans from the sage. The ring shouts, field hollers, and spirituals does it change the tone or surrounding areas. Fab 5 Freddy, Kurtis Blow, of early slaves drew on common elements of purpose of the essay up to African music, such as call and response and and Melle Mel were only a few of the pioneers. this point? Grand Wizard Theodore, Kool DJ AJ, the Cold improvisation. “Speech-song has been part of Crush Brothers, Spoony Gee, and the Rock black culture for a long, long time,” says Samuel Steady Crew of B-boys showed up to “battle” — A. Floyd, director of the Center for Black Music dance, trade quips and rhymes, check out each Research at Columbia College in Chicago. The other’s records and equipment — not know- “dozens,” “toasts,” and “signifying” of black ing as they strolled through the doors of the Americans — verbal dueling, rhyming, self-dep- community center near Bambaataa’s mother’s recating tales, and stories of blacks outsmarting apartment that they were writing musical his- whites — were defensive, empowering strategies.

tory. Among them was an MC named Lovebug You can point to jazz musicians such as 15 TEACHING IDEA Starski, who was said to utter the phrase “hip Oscar Brown, Jr., Edgar “Eddie” Jefferson, and hop” between breaks to keep time. Louis Armstrong, and blues greats such as John Students could research the This is how it worked: One guy, the DJ, Lee Hooker, and easily find the foreshadowing of artists listed in paragraphs 15–16 played records on two turntables. One guy — or rap music in the verbal play of their work. Black to further develop McBride’s claim that they are hip hop girl — served as master of ceremonies, or MC. performers such as poet Nikki Giovanni and ancestors. They could find The DJs learned to move the record back and Gil Scott-Heron, a pianist and vocalist who put relevant examples of songs or forth under the needle to create a “scratch,” spoken political lyrics to music (most famously poems to share with their or to drop the needle on the record where the in “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”), ele- classmates. beat was the hottest, playing “the break” over vated spoken word to a new level. and over to keep the folks dancing. The MCs But the artist whose work arguably laid the “rapped” over the music to keep the party going. groundwork for rap as we know it was Amiri One MC sought to outchat the other. Dance Baraka, a beat poet out of Allen Ginsberg’s styles were created — “locking” and “popping” Greenwich Village scene. In the late 1950s and and “breaking.” Graffiti artists spread the word ’60s, Baraka performed with shrieks, howls, of the “I” because the music was all about iden- cries, stomps, verse floating ahead of or behind tity: I am the best. I spread the most love in the the rhythm, sometimes in staccato syncopation. Bronx, in Harlem, in Queens. The focus initially It was performance art, delivered in a dashiki was not on the MCs, but on the dancers, or and Afro, in step with the anger of a bold and B-boys. Commercial radio ignored it. DJs sold sometimes frightening nationalistic black

CENTRAL ESSAY 303

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Ask students to identify the purpose of the quotation marks in paragraph 12. What do they add to McBride’s description? To his ethos? To his tone?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 303 22/03/18 11:55 AM 6 movement, and it inspired what might be con- member Umar Bin Hassan. “No videos, no radio Popular Culture sidered the first rap group, the Last Poets. play, strictly word of mouth.” The group’s demise I was 13 when I first heard the Last Poets coincided with hip hop’s birth in the 1970s. in 1970. They scared me. To black America, It’s unlikely that the Last Poets ever dreamed they were like the relatives you hoped wouldn’t the revolution they sang of would take the form show up at your barbecue because the boss was it has. “We were about the movement,” Abiodun there — the old Aunt Clementine who would Oyewole, a founder of the group, says. “A lot of arrive, get drunk, and pull out her dentures. My today’s rappers have talent. But a lot of them are parents refused to allow us to play their music driving the car in the wrong direction.” in our house — so my siblings waited until my parents went to work and played it anyway. The Crossover They were the first musical group I heard to Highways wrap around the city of Dayton, use the N-word on a record, with songs like Ohio, like a ribbon bow-tied on a box of “N______Are Scared of Revolution.” In a world chocolates from the local Esther Price candy where blacks were evolving from “Negroes” to factory. They have six ladies at the plant who “blacks,” and the assassinations of civil rights do just that: Tie ribbons around boxes all day. leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Henry Rosenkranz can tell you about it. “I love Jr., still reverberated in the air like a shotgun candy,” says Henry, a slim white teenager in blast, the Last Poets embodied black power. glasses and a hairnet, as he strolls the factory, Their records consisted of percussion and spo- bucket in hand. His full-time after-school job is ken-word rhyme. They were wildly popular in mopping the floors.

my neighborhood. Their debut recording sold Henry is a model American teenager — 20 400,000 records in three months, says Last Poet and the prototypical consumer at which the hip

Examine this 1988 image of Chuck D and the members of the hip-hop group Public Enemy. Identify some of the elements that draw on both the short and long history of hip hop as James McBride describes them. How does this photo relate to the Last Poets movement? Based on this image, would its founder, Abiodun Oyewole, think that Public Enemy was “driving the car in the wrong direction”? Would McBride? Jack Mitchell/Getty Images

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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING You might ask students to explain Abiodun Oyewole’s claim that many contemporary rappers are “driving the car in the wrong direction” (para. 18). Then, ask them to apply his comment to several current popular hip hop artists, such as Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, or Beyoncé. How would he interpret their priorities? How do students interpret them?

304 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 304 22/03/18 11:55 AM McBride hop industry is squarely aimed, which has his A white 16-year-old hollering rap lyrics at the BUILDING CONTEXT parents sitting up in their seats. The music that top of his lungs from the driver’s seat of his Students could research the was once the purview of black America has gone dad’s late-model Lexus may not have the same controversies McBride alludes to

white and gone commercial all at once. A sea rationale to howl at the moon as a working-class Hip Hop Planet in paragraph 21 to identify the of white faces now rises up to greet rap groups kid whose parents can’t pay for college, yet his arguments made against the as they perform, many of them teenagers like own anguish is as real to him as it gets. What music then and to compare them Henry, a NASCAR fanatic and self-described attracts white kids to this music is the same to contemporary attitudes. redneck. “I live in Old North Dayton,” he says. thing that prompted outraged congressmen to “It’s a white, redneck area. But hip hop is so decry jazz during the 1920s and Tipper Gore TEACHING IDEA prominent with country people . . . if you put to campaign decades later against violent and them behind a curtain and hear them talk, you sexually explicit lyrics: life on the other side of In paragraph 22, McBride won’t know if they’re black or white. There’s a the tracks; its “cool” or illicit factor, which black acknowledges that hip hop is guy I work with, when Kanye West sings about Americans, like it or not, are always perceived ever-evolving. You might expand on this point by asking students a gold digger, he can relate because he’s paying to possess. to make a claim about its evolu- alimony and child support.” Hip hop has continually changed form, tion since McBride published this Obviously, it’s not just working-class whites, evolving from party music to social commen- essay in 2007. This could be a but also affluent, suburban kids who identify tary with the 1982 release of Grandmaster Flash class discussion, a short home- with this music with African-American roots. and the Furious Five’s “The Message.” Today, work assignment, or even a full AP® exam-style argument essay. You might also introduce a This photograph shows the opening song to Hamilton (2015), a hit Broadway musical about the life of requirement that students founding father Alexander Hamilton. The score seamlessly blends rap, R&B, and pop, and the main cast support their positions with is comprised entirely of people of color. concrete examples from What does its popularity say about the mainstreaming of hip-hop and rap music? commercially successful songs or artists of the last two years.

Theo Wargo/Getty Images

CENTRAL ESSAY 305

TEACHING IDEA You might have students discuss the end of paragraph 21 about McBride’s claim about the “proto- race. Do students agree with that typical consumer at which the hip claim? Do they think McBride has hop industry is squarely aimed” adequately supported his (para. 20). To what extent do age, claims? What might be some race, class, gender, and other alternative rationales for the demographic characteristics play popularity of hip hop among into this designation? white teenagers? You could follow that with a discussion of McBride’s claim at

Teacher’s Edition 305

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 305 22/03/18 11:55 AM 6 alternative hip hop artists continue to produce overtly political rap. “It’s Big Brother controlling Popular Culture socially conscious songs, but most commercial you. To slip something in there that’s indige- rappers spout violent lyrics that debase women nous to the roots, that pays homage to the music and gays. Beginning with the so-called gangsta that came before us, it’s the Mount Everest of rap of the ’90s, popularized by the still unsolved battles.” murders of rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Most rap songs unabashedly function Shakur, the genre has become dominated by as walking advertisements for luxury cars, rappers who brag about their lives of crime. designer clothes, and liquor. Agenda Inc., a 50 Cent, the hip hop star of the moment, trum- “pop culture brand strategy agency,” listed pets his sexual exploits and boasts that he has Mercedes-Benz as the number one brand men- been shot nine times. tioned in Billboard’s top 20 singles in 2005. Hip “People call hip hop the MTV music now,” hop sells so much Hennessy cognac, listed at scoffs Chuck D, of Public Enemy, known for its number six, that the French makers, deader

seeing connections

The following excerpt is from the 2017 revised edition of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop by Adam Bradley. What details of James McBride’s argument support the claims Bradley makes here? What aspects of Bradley’s argument might McBride disagree with, and why?

from Book of Rhymes The Poetics of Hip Hop

ADAM BRADLEY Rap is public art, and rappers are perhaps our I believe that we are living in perhaps the greatest public poets, extending a tradition of most vital period that hip hop has ever seen. lyricism that spans continents and stretches That’s not to say that rap music has gotten back thousands of years. Thanks to the engines better since what many consider its golden of global commerce, rap is now the most widely age, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, only disseminated poetry in the history of the world. that rap’s creative potential has never been Of course, not all rap is great poetry, but collec- more apparent. More people from more places tively it has revolutionized the way our culture are making more kinds of rap music than at relates to the spoken word. Rappers at their best any other time in history. There’s something make the familiar unfamiliar through rhythm, so durable about the structure of word rapped rhyme, and wordplay. They refresh the language to a beat, something inclusive that resists any by fashioning patterned and heightened varia- attempts to enforce some narrow orthodoxy tions of everyday speech. They expand our under- or keep certain people out — be they from standing of human experience by telling stories another borough or coast, another gender or we might not otherwise hear. The best MCs — like sexual orientation, another race or life experi- Rakim, Jay Z, Tupac, and many others — deserve ence. Rap is free to all those willing to assume consideration alongside the giants of American the heavy burden of mastering its craft, of poetry. We ignore them at our own expense. . . . learning how to rock the mic right. 306

306 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 306 22/03/18 11:55 AM McBride than yesterday’s beer a decade ago, are now The Hotel Teranga is a fortress, packed rolling in suds. The company even sponsored a behind a concrete wall where beggars gather contest to win a visit to its plant in France with a at the front gate. The French tourists march

famous rapper. past them, the women in high heels and Hip Hop Planet

In many ways, the music represents an old 25 stonewashed jeans. They sidle through down- dream. It’s the pot of gold to millions of kids town Dakar like royalty, haggling in the market, like Henry, who quietly agonizes over how his swimming in the hotel pool with their children, father slaves 14 hours a day at two tool-and- a scene that resembles Birmingham, Alabama, die machine jobs to make ends meet. Like in the 1950s — the blacks serving, the whites teenagers across the world, he fantasizes about partying. Five hundred yards (460 meters) away, working in the hip hop business and making Africans eat off the sidewalk and sell peanuts for millions himself. a pittance. There is a restlessness, a deep sense “My parents hate hip hop,” Henry says, of something gone wrong in the air. motoring his 1994 Dodge Shadow through traffic The French can’t smell it, even though BUILDING CONTEXT on the way home from work on a hot October they’ve had a mouthful back home. A good afternoon. “But I can listen to Snoop Dogg and amount of the torching of Paris suburbs in Students could do some quick research into the Paris riots in hear him call women whores, and I know he has October 2005 was courtesy of the children October 2005, which McBride a wife and children at home. It’s just a fantasy. of immigrants from former French African references in paragraph 29. What Everyone has the urge deep down to be a bad colonies, exhausted from being bottled up in racial and economic factors were guy or a bad girl. Everyone likes to talk the talk, housing projects for generations with no job at play? What does understand- but not everyone will walk the walk.” prospects. They telegraphed the punch in ing this context add to students’ their music — France is the second largest hip perception of McBride’s overall Full Circle hop market in the world — but the message argument? You breathe in and breathe out a few times and was ignored. Around the globe, rap music has you are there. Eight hours and a wake-up shake become a universal expression of outrage, its on the flight from New York, and you are on the macho pose borrowed from commercial hip tarmac in Dakar, Senegal. Welcome to Africa. hop in the U.S.

The assignment: Find the roots of hip hop. In Dakar, where every kid is a microphone 30 The music goes full circle. The music comes and turntable away from squalor, and American home to Africa. That whole bit. Instead it was rapper Tupac Shakur’s picture hangs in market the old reporter’s joke: You go out to cover a stalls of folks who don’t understand English, story and the story covers you. The stench of rap is king. There are hundreds of rap groups poverty in my nostrils was so strong it pulled me in Senegal today. French television crews troop to earth like a hundred-pound ring in my nose. in and out of Dakar’s nightclubs filming the Dakar’s Sandaga market is full of “local color” — kora harp lute and tama talking drum with unless you live there. It was packed and filthy, regularity. But beneath the drumming and stalls full of new merchandise surrounded by the dance lessons and the jingling sound of shattered pieces of life everywhere, broken tourist change, there is a quiet rage, a desper- pipes, bicycle handlebars, fruit flies, soda ate fury among the Senegalese, some of whom bottles, beggars, dogs, cell phones. A teenage seem to bear an intense dislike of their former beggar, his body malformed by polio, crawled colonial rulers. by on hands and feet, like a spider. He said, “We know all about French history,” says “Hey brother, help me.” When I looked into his Abdou Ba, a Senegalese producer and musician. eyes, they were a bottomless ocean. “We know about their kings, their castles, their

CENTRAL ESSAY 307

CLOSE READING CLOSE READING Students could evaluate Henry’s McBride’s shifts between the comments that end this section second person and the first (para. 26) by defending, challeng- person in paragraph 27 merits ing, or qualifying his claim about analysis, especially if your the impact of sexist lyrics. They students are struggling to identify could also analyze McBride’s shifts and understand how they rhetorical purpose in using the relate to an author’s purpose. quotation at the end of this What purposes do these shifts section, especially in relation to serve, especially in terms of the discussion about the impact McBride’s ethos and his audi- of rap lyrics on liquor sales that ence? To help jumpstart analysis immediately precedes Henry’s here, you could have students comments. use the rhetorical triangle. Teacher’s Edition 307

Popular Culture seeing connections

Shown here is an image taken from Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A.’s music video for her 2016 song, “Borders.” The video makes extensive use of imagery that references the Syrian refugee crisis, and much of M.I.A.’s music and lyrics (including this song) stem from her own experience as a Sri Lankan refugee. Look carefully at this image, and then answer the following questions. 1. To what extent might this scene from “Borders” be read as an “expression of outrage,” as McBride calls rap music from “around the globe” (para. 29)? 2. What evidence do you see of what McBride calls a “macho pose borrowed from commercial hip hop in the U.S.” (para. 29)? 3. What connections might McBride draw between rap songs like “Borders” and hip-hop’s origins?

art, their music. We know everything about village marked by a huge boulder, perhaps 40 feet them. But they don’t know much about us.” (12 meters) high, facing the Atlantic Ocean. Assane N’Diaye, 19, loves hip hop music. About a century and a half ago, a local ruler Before he left his Senegalese village to work as led a group of people fleeing slave traders to this a DJ in Dakar, he was a fisherman, just like his place. He was told by a white trader to come father, like his father’s father before him. Tall, here, to Toubab Dialaw. When he arrived, the lean, with a muscular build and a handsome slavers followed. A battle ensued. The ruler chocolate face, Assane became a popular DJ, fought bravely but was killed. The villagers bur- but the equipment he used was borrowed, and ied him by the sea and marked his grave with a when his friend took it back, success eluded small stone, and over the years it is said to have him. He has returned home to Toubab Dialaw, sprouted like a tree planted by God. It became about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Dakar, a a huge, arching boulder that stares out to sea,

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308 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 308 22/03/18 11:55 AM McBride protecting the village behind it. When the fish- different from their African-American coun- TRM KEY PASSAGE ermen went deep out to sea, the boulder was terparts, with one exception. After a dinner This page contains a rich like a lighthouse that marked the way home. of chicken and rice, Assane says something passage suitable for close read-

The Great Rock of Toubab Dialaw is said to in Wolof to the others. Silently and without Hip Hop Planet ing. For an annotation handout of hold a magic spirit, a spirit that Assane N’Diaye ceremony, they take every bit of the leftover this passage, see the Teacher’s believes in. dinner — the half-eaten bread, rice, pieces Resource Flash Drive. In the shadow of the Great Rock, Assane has of chicken, the chicken bones — and dump built a small restaurant, Chez Las, decorated them into a plastic bag to give to the children CLOSE READING with hundreds of seashells. It is where he lives in the village. They silently rise from the table his hip hop dream. At night, he and his brother and proceed outside. The last I see of them, Students can discuss the and cousin stand by the Great Rock and face their regal figures are outlined in the dim light purpose of the “Full Circle” the sea. They meditate. They pray. Then they of the doorway, heading out to the darkened section in relation to McBride’s write rap lyrics that are worlds away from the village, holding on to that bag as though it overall argument. They could also bling-bling culture of today’s commercial hip held money. discuss its position in the structure of the essay — it is compara- hoppers. They write about their lives as village tively self-contained. Could it fishermen, the scarcity of catch forcing them The City of Gods perhaps fit elsewhere? Why or to fish in deeper and deeper waters, the hard- Some call the Bronx River Houses the City of why not? How would moving it ship of fishing for 8, 10, 14 days at a time in an Gods, though if God has been by lately, he change the impact of McBride’s open pirogue in rainy season, the high fee they must’ve slipped out for a chicken sandwich. rhetoric? pay to rent the boat, and the paltry price their The 10 drab, red-brick buildings spread out catches fetch on the market. They write about across 14 acres (5.7 hectares), coming into view the humiliation of poverty, watching their town as you drive east across the East 174th Street sprout up around them with rich Dakarians and Bridge. The Bronx is the hallowed holy ground richer French. And they write about the relatives of hip hop, the place where it all began. Visitors who leave in the morning and never return, take tours through this neighborhood now, surrendered to the sea, sharks, and God. care of a handful of fortyish “old-timers,” who

The dream, of course, is to make a record. 35 point out the high and low spots of hip hop’s They have their own demo, their own logo, birthplace. and their own name, Salam T. D. (for Toubab It is a telling metaphor for the state of Dialaw). But rap music represents a deeper America’s racial landscape that you need a dream: a better life. “We want money to help permit to hold a party in the same parks and our parents,” Assane says over dinner. “We playgrounds that produced the music that watch our mothers boil water to cook and have changed the world. The rap artists come and nothing to put in the pot.” go, but the conditions that produced them He fingers his food lightly. “Rap doesn’t linger. Forty percent of New York City’s black belong to American culture,” he says. males are jobless. One in three black males “It belongs here. It has always existed here, born in 2001 will end up in prison. The life because of our pain and our hardships and expectancy of black men in the U.S. ranks our suffering.” below that of men in Sri Lanka and Colombia. On this cool evening in a restaurant It took a massive hurricane in New Orleans above their village, these young men, clad for the United States to wake up to its racial in baseball caps and T-shirts, appear no realities.

CENTRAL ESSAY 309

Teacher’s Edition 309

Popular Culture seeing connections

Contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall completed this painting, entitled Past Times, in 1997. Composed with acrylic paint on unstretched canvas and measuring nine and a half feet by thirteen feet, it is truly larger than life. The title can be read as a play on the idea of leisurely American pastimes and as a reference to both American history and the history of fine art — indeed, the image is an homage to Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte, an iconic 1884 pointillist painting that shows a similar scene in a Parisian park. In the foreground of Past Times, bits of music emerge from the two boom boxes: The Temptations sing, “It was just my imagination running away with me,” and Snoop Dogg raps his famous lyrics, “Got my mind on my money and my money on my mind.” What connections does this painting make between rap and African American experience? How does it address some of the same cultural issues and benchmarks that McBride focuses on in “Hip Hop Planet”?

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TEACHING IDEA Paragraph 40 is full of claims that merit discussion. Students, in pairs or in groups, could analyze each statement (a sentence or a pair of sentences) using a graphic organizer to paraphrase McBride’s meaning, to connect it to evidence from his previous arguments, and to respond to its rhetorical effect.

Quotation Paraphrase Connection to Other Evidence Rhetorical Effect

310 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 310 22/03/18 11:55 AM McBride That is why, after 26 years, I have come to 40 the dream deferred to a global scale. Today, 2 BUILDING CONTEXT embrace this music I tried so hard to ignore. Hip percent of the Earth’s adult population owns hop culture is not mine. Yet I own it. Much of it more than 50 percent of its household wealth, You might note that “dream deferred” (para. 40) is an allusion

I hate. Yet I love it, the good of it. To confess a and indigenous cultures are swallowed with the Hip Hop Planet love for a music that, at least in part, embraces rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato to Langston Hughes’s short and violence is no easy matter, but then again our chips. The music is calling. Over the years, the iconic poem “Harlem.” You might national anthem talks about bombs bursting in instruments change, but the message is the ask students to search for and read the poem on their electronic air, and I love that song, too. At its best, hip hop same. The drums are pounding out a warning. devices, and, if time permits, you lays bare the empty moral cupboard that is our They are telling us something. Our children could also discuss the Harlem generation’s legacy. This music that once made can hear it. Renaissance and its connection visible the inner culture of America’s greatest The question is: Can we? to the musical traditions McBride social problem, its legacy of slavery, has taken [2007] describes in his essay. Ask students to reflect on McBride’s reference to Hughes’s poem: What purpose does it serve? QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION What point does it emphasize?

1. What do you consider James McBride’s primary “In a globalized age it’s perhaps inevitable that the purpose in “Hip Hop Planet”? Do you think this is culture of resistance gets globalized, too. What we CHECK FOR a personal essay or a cultural study? Explain your are seeing is what Mark Lilla of the University of UNDERSTANDING response. Chicago calls a universal culture of the wretched If McBride’s last line is a call to of the earth. The images, modes and attitudes of 2. “Hip Hop Planet” was included in the inaugural action, what action is he suggest- edition of Best African American Essays (2009). In hip hop and gangsta rap are so powerful they are ing? It may be helpful to remind her review of the collection on the Kenyon Review’s having a hegemonic effect across the globe.” How website, Samantha Simpson notes that the does that view of hip hop compare to McBride’s? students to keep McBride’s audi- collection “strains against the oversimplification of Do you think McBride would agree with Brooks? ence in mind. the African-American community’s concerns. The Explain why or why not. collection does not only cull the voices concerned 5. In paragraph 23 McBride quotes Chuck D, of TRM SUGGESTED with the politics of race, but it also includes essays Public Enemy. What is your view of Chuck D’s RESPONSES that deal with matters of the heart. That is, the assertion? Are there ways in which rap music does collection is a far cry from the obligatory Black pay “homage to the music that came before”? Suggested responses to the History Month lessons on important Black People.” If so, what are they? questions for this reading can be Do you consider McBride’s essay to be about 6. Read the description of the music composed by found on the Teacher’s Resource matters of the heart, or is it about the politics of the would-be Senegalese rapper Assane N’Diaye Flash Drive. race? Explain your answer. (para. 34). Do you consider this to be a lesser form 3. McBride’s lead (the opening paragraph of his of rap or a truer form? Explain your answer. essay) could be considered provocative, perhaps 7. In the next-to-last paragraph of McBride’s even confrontational. Having read the whole essay, essay, he justifies his acceptance of the violence go back and reread the lead. Is it an effective that hip hop music embraces by saying that our introduction to the essay, or could it be considered national anthem is also about violence. What misleading? Explain. do you think of that comparison? In what ways 4. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times in does it help his argument? In what ways might it 2005 about riots in French housing projects, says, hinder it?

CENTRAL ESSAY 311

Teacher’s Edition 311

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

1. McBride argues that hip hop music is a warning hop music, its “macho pose borrowed from (para. 40). Write an essay in which you support, commercial hip hop in the U.S.” (para. 29). challenge, or qualify his assertion. Judy Rosen, writing in the online magazine Slate, 2. McBride quotes Abiodun Oyewole, a founder of argues that “France, the nation that enshrines what he considers the first rap group, the Last Poets conversational grandiloquence as a civic virtue (para. 18): “‘A lot of today’s rappers have talent. right up there with fraternité, would take to the But a lot of them are driving the car in the wrong most blabbermouthed genre in music history,” direction.’” Analyze Oyewole’s statement, and write suggesting that it has remade hip hop in its own an essay in which you support, challenge, or qualify fashion. Research rap music in countries such as his assertion. Be sure to use examples of today’s France, Brazil, and England; then write an essay rappers who illustrate your argument. in which you examine the influence of American hip hop on the music of these countries as well 3. Listen to the music and poetry of some of the as the influence of foreign musicians on American old-school musicians and writers McBride cites, rap and hip hop. such as Louis Armstrong, Nikki Giovanni, and Amiri Baraka. Write an essay in which you examine their 5. Imagine and write a conversation between Henry influence on specific hip hop musicians. Rosenkranz and Assane N’Diaye in which they discuss the sources, messages, and benefits of hip 4. McBride suggests that the anger from the 2005 hop music. riots in the Paris suburbs found its way into hip

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MARK TWAIN TB MULTIPLE CHOICE Mark Twain (1835–1910) is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Best known as a novelist — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer For an AP®-style multiple-choice (1876), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) are among Twain’s question set on a passage from most famous — Twain also worked as a typesetter, a riverboat pilot, a miner, a this reading, see The Language of reporter, and an editor. His early writings reflect his pre–Civil War upbringing Composition, Third Edition Test in their idyllic images as well as in their reminders of some of America’s least Bank, which is both available in acceptable social realities. Twain spent his life observing and reporting on ExamView format and integrated into the e-book. his surroundings, and his work provides a glimpse into the mind-set of the late nineteenth century. “Corn-Pone Opinions,” which was found in his papers after his death, was first published in 1923 in Europe and Elsewhere. In it, Twain comments — not always TEACHING IDEA approvingly — on word of mouth as the spreader of popular opinion and culture. For a Grammar as Rhetoric and Library of Congress Style workshop on Modifiers featuring this reading, see ifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen see how the work was getting along. I listened to Appendix A, p. 1145. Fand helping to inhabit a Missourian village the sermons from the open window of a lumber on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend room at the back of the house. One of his texts TRM LESSON PLAN whose society was very dear to me because was this: A lesson plan for this reading can I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. “You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, be found on the Teacher’s He was a gay and impudent and satirical and en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.” Resource Flash Drive. delightful young black man — a slave — who I can never forget it. It was deeply daily preached sermons from the top of his impressed upon me. By my mother. Not upon TRM VIDEO master’s woodpile, with me for sole audience. my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in For a video that walks students He imitated the pulpit style of the several cler- upon me while I was absorbed and not watch- through a close reading and gymen of the village, and did it well, and with ing. The black philosopher’s idea was that a annotation of the key passage on fine passion and energy. To me he was a won- man is not independent, and cannot afford this page, see the Teacher’s der. I believed he was the greatest orator in the views which might interfere with his bread and Resource Flash Drive. United States and would some day be heard butter. If he would prosper, he must train with from. But it did not happen; in the distribution the majority; in matters of large moment, like TRM VIDEO of rewards he was overlooked. It is the way, in politics and religion, he must think and feel For a video featuring the authors this world. with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage of The Language of Composition He interrupted his preaching, now and then, in his social standing and in his business pros- in a round-table discussion about to saw a stick of wood; but the sawing was a perities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone rhetorical features of and peda- pretense — he did it with his mouth; exactly imi- opinions — at least on the surface. He must gogical approaches to this text, tating the sound the bucksaw makes in shriek- get his opinions from other people; he must see the Teacher’s Resource Flash ing its way through the wood. But it served its reason out none for himself; he must have no Drive. purpose; it kept his master from coming out to first-hand views.

CLASSIC ESSAY 313

TEACHING IDEA CLOSE READING Before students begin to read about the ways in which the Students could analyze how the Twain’s essay, it might be music, fashion, and entertainment essay’s first four paragraphs interesting to give them a chance industries create word of mouth create ethos — both for Twain as to evaluate the term “word of through their publicity machines. the speaker and for the young mouth” as a reliable form of How has the meaning of word of man whose claim in paragraph 3 cultural recommendation. mouth changed since Twain’s is the source of the essay’s title. Students will likely be savvy time? Where does Twain employ humor, and what rhetorical purpose does each instance serve?

Teacher’s Edition 313

Shown here is a World War I–era poster designed to encourage young British men to join the army. What cultural values does the poster tap into to achieve its goal? What might Mark Twain have thought of this poster? GRAPHICA Collection/Bridgeman Images ARTIS/Private

I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I think 5 Public opinion resented it before, public opinion he did not go far enough. accepts it now, and is happy in it. Why? Was the resentment reasoned out? Was the acceptance rea- 1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the soned out? No. The instinct that moves to confor- majority view of his locality by calculation mity did the work. It is our nature to conform; it is a and intention. This happens, but I think it is force which not many can successfully resist. What not the rule. is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval. 2. It was his idea that there is such a thing as a TEACHING IDEA We all have to bow to that; there are no exceptions. first-hand opinion; an original opinion; an Even the woman who refuses from first to last to It’s worth exploring the definition opinion which is coldly reasoned out in a of “opinion” in paragraph 5 — and wear the hoopskirt comes under that law and is man’s head, by a searching analysis of the elsewhere in the essay. How its slave; she could not wear the skirt and have her facts involved, with the heart unconsulted, might words and phrases such as own approval; and that she must have, she cannot and the jury room closed against outside perspective, point of view, evalu- help herself. But as a rule our self-approval has its influences. It may be that such an opinion has ation, position, or belief differ in source in but one place and not elsewhere — the been born somewhere, at some time or other, meaning? After reaching the end approval of other people. A person of vast con- but I suppose it got away before they could of the essay, you might ask sequences can introduce any kind of novelty in catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum. students to discuss the extent to dress and the general world will presently adopt which Twain is conveying his I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out it — moved to do it, in the first place, by the natural opinion — as opposed to one of and independent verdict upon a fashion in instinct to passively yield to that vague something the words mentioned above. clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or recognized as authority, and in the second place religion, or any other matter that is projected into by the human instinct to train with the multitude CHECK FOR the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare and have its approval. An empress introduced UNDERSTANDING thing — if it has indeed ever existed. the hoopskirt, and we know the result. A nobody You might ask students to decide A new thing in costume appears — the flaring introduced the bloomer, and we know the result. if the claim in paragraph 6 is hoopskirt, for example — and the passers-by are If Eve should come again, in her ripe renown, and sincere, hyperbolic, or humorous. shocked, and the irreverent laugh. Six months later reintroduce her quaint styles — well, we know what How effective is it? everybody is reconciled; the fashion has estab- would happen. And we should be cruelly embar- lished itself; it is admired, now, and no one laughs. rassed, along at first. 314

BUILDING CONTEXT TEACHING IDEA You might want to have students Paragraph 7 would work well do an image search for “flaring read aloud, perhaps with inter- hoopskirt” (para. 7), as most will ruptions to discuss how Twain likely not have seen one before. builds his complex argument. You You could extend the activity by might ask if the first people to asking students to give contem- introduce or reject the fashion porary examples of something trends count as people with that the culture adopted in a original opinions. similar fashion — such as the fidget spinner, for instance.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 314 22/03/18 11:56 AM The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears. conform. We are creatures of outside influences; as Twain TRM KEY PASSAGE Nobody reasons about it. One woman abandons a rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot the fashion; her neighbor notices this and fol- invent standards that will stick; what we mistake This page contains a rich Corn-Pone Opinions Corn-Pone lows her lead; this influences the next woman; for standards are only fashions, and perishable. We passage suitable for close reading. For an annotation handout of and so on and so on, and presently the skirt has may continue to admire them, but we drop the use this passage, see the Teacher’s vanished out of the world, no one knows how nor of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare Resource Flash Drive. why, nor cares, for that matter. It will come again, is a standard, and fifty years ago we used to write by and by and in due course will go again. tragedies which we couldn’t tell from — from Twenty-five years ago, in England, six or eight somebody else’s; but we don’t do it any more, now. wine glasses stood grouped by each person’s Our prose standard, three quarters of a century ago, plate at a dinner party, and they were used, not was ornate and diffuse; some authority or other left idle and empty; to-day there are but three or changed it in the direction of compactness and sim- four in the group, and the average guest sparingly plicity, and conformity followed, without argument. uses about two of them. We have not adopted The historical novel starts up suddenly, and sweeps this new fashion yet, but we shall do it presently. the land. Everybody writes one, and the nation is We shall not think it out; we shall merely con- glad. We had historical novels before; but nobody form, and let it go at that. We get our notions and read them, and the rest of us conformed — without habits and opinions from outside influences; we reasoning it out. We are conforming in the other do not have to study them out. way, now, because it is another case of everybody. Our table manners, and company manners and 10 The outside influences are always pouring in CLOSE READING street manners change from time to time, but the upon us, and we are always obeying their orders Twain moves through several changes are not reasoned out; we merely notice and and accepting their verdicts. The Smiths like the examples on this page — fashion, new play; the Joneses go to see it, and they copy etiquette, literature, theater the Smith verdict. Morals, religions, politics, get before shifting to “morals, reli- their following from surrounding influences and How might Mark Twain have rewritten the gion, politics” in paragraph 11. atmospheres, almost entirely; not from study, not thought bubble of this cartoon? Ask students to analyze Twain’s from thinking. A man must and will have his own progression of evidence here, approval first of all, in each and every moment and debate whether he is creat- and circumstance of his life — even if he must ing any false equivalencies repent of a self-approved act the moment after between these fields. How its commission, in order to get his self-approval consistent is Twain’s definition of again: but, speaking in general terms, a man’s “opinions” throughout? self-approval in the large concerns of life has its source in the approval of the peoples about him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter. Mohammedans are Mohammedans because they are born and reared among that sect, not because they have thought it out and can furnish sound reasons for being Mohammedans; we know why Catholics are Catholics; why Presbyterians are Presbyterians; why Baptists are Baptists; why Mormons are Mormons; why thieves are thieves; why mon-

Chris Madden archists are monarchists; why Republicans are

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TEACHING IDEA After reading paragraphs 5–10, what you don’t know is that that doubt, fished it out of some clear- you might play for your students sweater is not just blue. It’s not ance bin. However, that blue the “blue sweater” scene from turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actu- represents millions of dollars and The Devil Wears Prada (2006), in ally cerulean. And you’re also countless jobs, and it’s sort of which tyrannical fashion editor blithely unaware of the fact that in comical how you think that you’ve Miranda Priestly scolds her new 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a made a choice that exempts you employee, who believes herself to collection of cerulean gowns, and from the fashion industry when, in be unaffected by fashion trends: then I think it was Yves Saint fact, you’re wearing a sweater “Okay, I see. You think this has Laurent who showed cerulean that was selected for you by the nothing to do with you. You go to military jackets, and then cerulean people in this room, from a pile of your closet and select, I don’t quickly showed up in the collec- stuff.” Ask students to discuss the know, that lumpy blue sweater, for tions of eight different designers. extent to which the point Priestly instance, because you’re trying to And then it filtered down to the makes in this scene supports tell the world that you take your- department stores, and then trick- Twain’s argument in paragraphs self too seriously to care about led on down to some tragic 5–10. Is there any sense in which what you put on your back, but Casual Corner where you, no this scene undermines Twain? Teacher’s Edition 315

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 315 22/03/18 11:56 AM 6 Republicans and Democrats, Democrats. We and membership in the herd. For these gauds TEACHING IDEA Popular Culture know it is a matter of association and sympathy, many a man will dump his life-long principles If students have read The not reasoning and examination; that hardly a into the street, and his conscience along with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, man in the world has an opinion upon mor- them. We have seen it happen. In some millions they could apply Twain’s claim in als, politics, or religion which he got otherwise of instances. the middle of paragraph 11 than through his associations and sympathies. Men think they think upon great political (“Sometimes conformity… must Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone questions, and they do; but they think with their have its way”) to that novel’s depic- opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone party, not independently; they read its literature, tion of attitudes toward race. You stands for self- approval. Self-approval is acquired but not that of the other side; they arrive at con- could also use those sentences as mainly from the approval of other people. The victions, but they are drawn from a partial view of an argument prompt for students result is conformity. Sometimes conformity has a the matter in hand and are of no particular value. to defend, challenge, or qualify, sordid business interest — the bread-and-butter They swarm with their party, they feel with their supporting their response with interest — but not in most cases, I think. I think party, they are happy in their party’s approval; appropriate evidence. that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and and where the party leads they will follow, not calculated; that it’s born of the human being’s whether for right and honor, or through blood TEACHING IDEA natural yearning to stand well with his fellows and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals. At the end of paragraph 11, Twain and have their inspiring approval and praise — a In our late canvass half of the nation pas- refers to “some millions of yearning which is commonly so strong and so sionately believed that in silver lay salvation, the instances” that support his claim, insistent that it cannot be effectually resisted, other half as passionately believed that that way but he does not include any of his and must have its way. A political emergency lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part own. An interesting approach brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in of the people, on either side, had any rational would be to have students evalu- its two chief varieties — the pocketbook variety, excuse for having an opinion about the mat- ate the effectiveness of this which has its origin in self-interest, and the ter at all? I studied that mighty question to the rhetorical move by offering their bigger variety, the sentimental variety — the one bottom — came out empty. Half of our people own examples in support of which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t passionately believe in high tariff, the other half Twain’s claim. Then, have them bear to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted believe otherwise. Does this mean study and offer examples that challenge it. face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. After wrapping the discussion, with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants I have deeply studied that question, too — and check back in: Have students I have deeply studied that question, too — and changed their thoughts on to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, didn’t arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we Twain’s rhetorical move in that “He’s on the right track!” Uttered, perhaps by an mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an paragraph? If so, why? ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles TEACHING IDEA and confers glory and honor and happiness, everything. Some think it the Voice of God. [1923] Twain’s claims about political allegiances in paragraph 12 could provoke a fruitful discussion QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION about the effects of social media 1. According to Mark Twain, “It is our nature to How does the distinction apply to the twenty-first feeds in contemporary culture conform” (para. 7); he also says that we do so century? (“they read its literature, but not for self-approval. The two statements seem 3. Twain’s essay is ultimately a denunciation of that of the other side”). contradictory; how does Twain connect conformity cultural chauvinism. What consequences does and self-approval? he suggest are the result of “corn-pone opinions”? CLOSE READING 2. Twain makes a distinction between “standards” Which are explicit? Which are implicit? and “fashions” (para. 10). What is the difference? 4. The last paragraph begins with a reference The essay’s final paragraph What examples does he provide for each? to a “late canvass” in which “half the nation merits close reading to analyze the strategies Twain uses to pres- 316 ent his arguments. Ask students first to analyze his methods, then to assess their effectiveness.

TRM SUGGESTED RESPONSES Suggested responses to the questions for this reading can be found on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 316 22/03/18 11:56 AM passionately believed” in one path and “the 5. In what two ways does a political emergency bring Twain other half as passionately believed” in another. out corn-pone opinions? What does Twain mean To what was Twain probably referring? Does he by “an ass of high degree” (para. 11)?

take sides? How does he distinguish between Opinions Corn-Pone thinking and feeling?

QUESTIONS ON RHETORIC AND STYLE

1. What is Twain’s purpose in “Corn-Pone Opinions”? 6. Explain the irony of Twain’s qualification of Jerry’s 2. Trace Twain’s use of the personal pronoun. What is statement about calculation and intention in the effect of changing from I to we? paragraph 5. 7. Why is paragraph 11 so long? Where, if anywhere, 3. Twain claims he got the idea of corn-pone opinions could Twain have broken it up? What is the effect from a young slave with a talent for preaching. of the series of subordinate clauses in the middle What does the anecdote add to his argument? of the paragraph? Does it detract from it in any way? If so, how? 8. What is the effect of the parallelism in the two long 4. How does Twain expand Jerry’s definition of corn- sentences that make up paragraph 12? pone opinions? What is the effect of numbering the two items in which he begins to expand Jerry’s 9. What is the effect of capitalizing “Public Opinion” and definition (para. 5)? “Voice of God” at the end of the essay (para. 13)? 5. Identify Twain’s appeals to logos. Do the subjects 10. How does a phrase such as “helping to inhabit” in the of the appeals (hoopskirts, bloomers, wine glasses) first paragraph contribute to the tone of the essay? strengthen the appeals or weaken them? Explain 11. Find examples of understatement and hyperbole. your response. Discuss their effects.

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

1. Do you agree or disagree with Twain’s assertion that 4. Twain says he believed that the slave Jerry was “[i]t is our nature to conform” (para. 7)? Explain why. “the greatest orator in the United States” (para. 1) 2. Refute Twain’s view of Public Opinion by defending but that “in the distribution of rewards he was word of mouth as the most reliable communicator overlooked.” Write about how Jerry might have of cultural innovation. viewed his situation. 3. In paragraph 10, Twain contrasts prose styles 5. Write your own version of “Corn-Pone Opinions,” that are “ornate and diffuse” with those that are giving examples from contemporary culture and characterized by “compactness and simplicity.” Find politics. Do you end up making the same argument examples of each, and write an essay comparing and as Twain, or do you think Americans are more contrasting the effects of the two prose styles. independent thinkers now? Explain why.

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TRM VOCABULARY The Affluence of Despair A vocabulary exercise based on challenging words from this read- RAY BRADBURY ing can be found on the Teacher’s Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror, and mystery Resource Flash Drive. writer and screenwriter. Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, and his family eventually settled in Los Angeles, California, when Bradbury was 14. After he was declared unfit for TB MULTIPLE military service during World War II, he began his writing career. Over the course of his life, CHOICE he wrote numerous books, including Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a dystopian novel about the For an AP®-style multiple-choice necessity of free speech. Bradbury’s numerous awards and accolades include a star on question set on a passage from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a 2007 Pulitzer Citation, and a 2004 National Medal of the this reading, see The Language of Arts. Bradbury’s obituary in the New York Times calls him “the writer most responsible for Composition, Third Edition Test bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream.” He wrote the following op-ed Bank, which is both available in for the Wall Street Journal in 1998. ExamView format and integrated into the e-book. ow come? How come we’re one of the flood in . . . we enjoy what could be described as greatest nations in the world . . . and yet, The Affluence of Despair? BUILDING CONTEXT H there is this feeling of Doom? How come, while America today: We wonder how we look at If some students have read our president walks wounded, we ourselves jog this hour, what we feel this minute, what we’re Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, you along nicely, but . . . under a dark cloud that says imagining now. So we switch the television on. might have them review its plot something awful is about to happen? How come, How do we look in the 80 million-lensed TV and themes before discussing with 500,000 immigrants a year yammering to eye on America the beautiful? Did you catch this essay in class. Then, after they read the essay, ask them to note connections.

TEACHING IDEA This graph, based on data published by Pew Research Center in 2016, shows how Americans prefer to get their news according to age group. Since Bradbury shifts among How could this data be used to support a counterargument to Bradbury’s central thesis? voices without always identifying the speaker, you could begin by How Americans Prefer to Get Their News reading the first four paragraphs 18–29 30–49 50–64 65+ aloud to the students, shifting 58% your vocal register when the 52% perspective changes to, say, the 42% 40% 39% voices on TV (in the last sentence 38% 29% of para. 2). Next, you could have 27% 19% 20% the students reread those para- 17% 10% graphs, and underline or highlight the voices that are not Bradbury’s. Then, ask them to Reading Watching Listening define how Bradbury signals the Data from Pew Research Center. shifts (for instance, the use of the 318 first person).

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The novelist William Burroughs famously said that there is no such thing as an innocent The Affluence of Despair bystander. How does this cartoon comment on that idea? Which of Ray Bradbury’s claims does this cartoon most closely reflect? J.C. Duffy/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank Cartoon Collection/The Yorker New Duffy/The J.C.

me last night confessing what I caught and We display our brilliance on “Jeopardy,” forget- what caught me? ting that its factoids are 90% useless once you Recall Starbuck’s advice to mad Ahab?1 kill the set. We don’t ask who Napoleon was but “Do not fear me, old man. Beware of thy self, my where he was buried. Or why he invaded Russia, captain.” America should beware of itself. Today, but when. we are everywhere loving to be watched. My God, A friend of mine bragged he had bought a TEACHING IDEA look, I am on Channel Nine! We do not suffer dish that could cup, cull, and catch 200 channels Bradbury uses strong, loaded from totalitarian lunatics, but from the astonish- raining across a moron sky. Hell, I said, you’ve just diction throughout the essay but ing proliferation of our images. We perform for got a bigger windmill to catch more of nothing: especially in the middle section, ourselves, not Big Brother. We have fallen in love O.J. blood here, House of Usher AIDS there, the beginning with paragraph 6 (“a with mirrors. Flash a camera and your merest Killing Fields of America’s high roads, each car moron sky,” for instance). Ask broccoli-headed citizen morphs into Travolta or a glorious pyre to mindless speed. And in every students to circle notable and Madonna. front yard a Mrs. Guiterrez being questioned but unusual examples of diction as And all of it on local TV news, in 15-second watching the TV mirror to see how she plays. they read the essay and then disaster updates. Breaking bones, breaking news, Those epileptic souls at football, baseball, choose several to analyze their at 11. “Tell us, Mrs. Guiterrez, how’s it feel with hockey matches, who frenzy for the TV effect (or divide examples among your son shotgunned minutes ago?” camera — how to end their pantomimes? We groups in the class). This is a We do not go to the theater, we are the the- 5 the judges and jurors trying, damning or freeing good opportunity to get students ater. We have invaded the TV studios and run the guilty, weighing topics we’re unqualified to discussing pathos in a way that the country to mania on talking-head shows. answer — how to cork this motormouth? helps move them away from mere The problem is not necessarily with our identification to true rhetorical national full-coverage news, which can be only analysis. 1 In Herman Melville’s iconic 1851 novel Moby-Dick, first mate Starbuck warns Captain Ahab to “beware of thyself.” —Eds. mildly depressing. It is with the assault of the

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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING You might amplify the meaning of the Moby-Dick allusion in paragraph 3 to help students understand its importance and scale. (Students may also be surprised by the name “Starbuck” — it’s not a reference to a coffee chain or to Battlestar Galactica!) You might also need to confirm that they understand the “Travolta or Madonna” reference.

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Popular Culture seeing connections

On Wednesday, December 2, 2015, a married coupled named Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and injured 22 others in a mass shooting and attempted bombing of Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. They were both killed by police in the ensuing chase and shootout. On the morning of Friday, December 4, Farook and Malik’s landlord opened the couple’s rented townhouse to news crews, who proceeded to go through their belongings on live television. National networks later came under fire for showing photographs and identifying documents of people who were not yet publicly identified as suspects. While Bradbury warns against local news channels in “The Affluence of Despair,” what might he have to say about the driving force behind the national networks’ behavior in this case? How might he update his essay, which was first published in 1998, to account for the technological changes that have occurred since then?

local TV paparazzi, who machine-gun you with destroy us, so they destroyed some part of the decapitations, sexual harassments, gangster exe- apple industry? Recall the poison cellar gas cutions in 15-second explosions for the full half- rising to asphyxiate your kids? Or those arsenic hour. No attack army could survive that fusillade. Peruvian grapes promising to strip our gears? Bullets, real and psychological, wound and kill. Or the Three Mile Island2 nuclear meltdown So we must stand alert, ward off a cen- where nothing melted, no injuries, no deaths? tral core despair, target our Panic of the Week Panic for two weeks, make it three. Ratings up. Syndrome, guard against the local TV séance. Morale down. Every week, 52 weeks a year, they need a prime What to do? Leave a message on your local disaster focus to spin the garbage and glue the station’s machine, describing their stupidity. potato people to the tube. Remember the Alar-poisoned apples that 10 BUILDING CONTEXT 2 A nuclear generating station in Pennsylvania, where a nuclear the dinner time newsbites claimed would meltdown created panic among the general public in 1979. —Eds. Students might research the events Bradbury mentions in 320 paragraph 10, and then evaluate the extent to which the media was complicit in promoting fear. They could also cite comparable recent examples. You might also TEACHING IDEA ask them to compare and Students could debate the effec- contrast the media’s role in tiveness of Bradbury’s solutions reporting such events to the in paragraphs 11–12. They could public versus its role in shaping identify counterarguments and the narrative that emerges in its propose alternative solutions. aftermath (see also the Seeing Connections box on this page).

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OTHER VOICES 321

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 321 22/03/18 11:56 AM 6 TRM VOCABULARY High-School Confidential Popular Culture A vocabulary exercise based on Notes on Teen Movies challenging words from this reading can be found on the Teacher’s DAVID DENBY Resource Flash Drive. David Denby (b. 1943), who lives in New York City, is a staff writer and film critic for the New Yorker and the former film critic for New York. His writing has also appeared in the Atlantic, TB MULTIPLE the New York Review of Books, and the New Republic. His first book, Great Books: My CHOICE Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western For an AP®-style multiple-choice World (1996), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books include question set on a passage from American Sucker (2004), Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits (2009), Do the Movies Have a Future? this reading, see The Language of (2012), and Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives Composition, Third Edition Test (2016). The essay that follows was originally published in the New Yorker in May 1999. Bank, which is both available in ExamView format and integrated into the e-book. he most hated young woman in America like a beer mug and only two ways of speaking — Tis a blonde — well, sometimes a redhead in a conspiratorial whisper, to a friend; or in a TEACHING IDEA or a brunette, but usually a blonde. She has drill sergeant’s sudden bellow. If her weapon is For a Grammar as Rhetoric and big hair flipped into a swirl of gold at one side the snub, his is the lame but infuriating prank — Style workshop on Modifiers of her face or arrayed in a sultry mane, like the the can of Sprite emptied into a knapsack, or featuring this reading, see magnificent pile of a forties movie star. She’s tall something sticky, creamy, or adhesive depos- Appendix A, p. 1145. and slender, with a waist as supple as a willow, ited in a locker. Sprawling and dull in class, he but she’s dressed in awful, spangled taste: her comes alive in the halls and in the cafeteria. He TEACHING IDEA outfits could have been put together by war- hurls people against lockers; he spits, pours, and ring catalogues. And she has a mouth on her, sprays; he has a projectile relationship with food. Before students read this essay, a low, slatternly tongue that devastates other As the crown prince, he claims the best-looking you might ask them if they have seen any of the movies Denby kids with such insults as “You’re vapor, you’re girl for himself, though in a perverse display of references: Disturbing Behavior, Spam!” and “Do I look like Mother Teresa? If I power he may invite an outsider or an awkward She’s All That, Ten Things I Hate did, I probably wouldn’t mind talking to the geek girl — a “dog” — to the prom, setting her up for about You, and Never Been squad.” She has two or three friends exactly like some special humiliation. When we first see him, Kissed (para. 3); Rushmore (para. her, and together they dominate their realm — he is riding high, and virtually the entire school 9); If . . ., Carrie, and Heathers the American high school as it appears in recent colludes in his tyranny. No authority figure — no (para. 14); Clueless, Romy and teen movies. They are like wicked princesses, teacher or administrator — dares correct him. Michele’s High School Reunion, who enjoy the misery of their subjects. Her Thus the villains of the recent high-school and Election (para. 15). You might coronation, of course, is the senior prom, when movies. Not every American teen movie has also check in about whether they she expects to be voted “most popular” by her these two characters, and not every social queen have seen Mean Girls and the TV class. But, though she may be popular, she is or jock shares all the attributes I’ve mentioned. show Riverdale (see the photos certainly not liked, so her power is something (Occasionally, a handsome, dark-haired athlete on p. 323) — though they post- of a mystery. She is beautiful and rich, yet in the can be converted to sweetness and light.) But as date Denby’s essay by several end she is preeminent because . . . she is preem- genre figures these two types are hugely familiar; years, students should be able to inent, a position she works to maintain with Joan that is, they are a common memory, a collective see that they are of the genre his Crawford–like tenacity. Everyone is afraid of her; trauma, or at least a social and erotic fantasy. essay explores. that’s why she’s popular. Such movies . . . as Disturbing Behavior, She’s You might also ask students She has a male counterpart. He’s usually a All That, Ten Things I Hate about You, and Never to identify other films (or perhaps football player, muscular but dumb, with a face Been Kissed depend on them as stock figures. And TV series) set in high school and to brainstorm stereotypic charac- 322 teristics of high school students. You could also show clips from one or more of these films or TV shows — or have students choose relevant clips after they CLOSE READING CLOSE READING read the essay. (They could then Although Denby uses the first two Students could analyze the analyze the visual rhetoric of paragraphs to define the stereo- rhetorical effect of the abrupt the clips.) typic villains in teen movies, you introduction of the Columbine might also ask students to shooting in paragraph 3. discuss the descriptions through the lenses of race, class, and/or gender. How do these descriptions reinforce other cultural stereotypes?

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High-school movies are also full of unease 5 and odd, mixed-up emotions. They may be flimsy in conception; they may be shot in lollipop colors, garlanded with mediocre pop scores, and cast with goofy young actors trying to make an impression. Yet this most commercial and frivolous of genres harbors a grievance against the world. It’s a very specific grievance, quite differ- BUILDING CONTEXT ent from the restless anger of such fifties adoles- cent-rebellion movies as The Wild One, in which You might ask students to flip In what ways do these images from the films forward to the photo of Marlon Heathers (1988) and Mean Girls (2004) and someone asks Marlon Brando’s biker “What are Brando in The Wild One on p. the television show Riverdale (2017) illustrate you rebelling against?” and the biker replies Denby’s claim about who the real “enemy” is “What have you got?” The fifties teen outlaw was 337. You could also show the iconic Brando clip from The Wild in teen movies? What do these images suggest against anything that adults considered sacred. One (especially if students also about the durability of that claim? But no movie teenager now revolts against adult read Patterson’s essay on motor- authority, for the simple reason that adults have cycle jackets, p. 336). they may have been figures in the minds of the no authority. Teachers are rarely more than a Littleton shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, minimal, exasperated presence, administrators who imagined they were living in a school like get turned into a joke, and parents are either the one in so many of these movies — a poison- absent or distantly benevolent. It’s a teen world ous system of status, snobbery, and exclusion. bounded by school, mall, and car, with occasional moments set in the fast-food outlets where ◆ ◆ ◆ the kids work, or in the kids’ upstairs bedrooms, Do genre films reflect reality? Or are they merely with their pinups and rack stereo systems. The a set of conventions that refer to other films? enemy is not authority; the enemy is other teens Obviously, they wouldn’t survive if they didn’t and the social system that they impose on one provide emotional satisfaction to the people another.

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BUILDING CONTEXT You might ask students to define “genre films” (para. 4) and to identify other categories in addition to westerns, gangster films, and teen movies. They could then explore why they, or others, enjoy them, and what cultural implications they have.

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TEACHING IDEA Popular Culture grownups as peculiar. After all, from a distance system in Disturbing Behavior (a high-school You could use the first half of American kids appear to be having it easy these version of The Stepford Wives) and in the other paragraph 6 (through “… always days. The teen audience is facing a healthy job movies still feels coercive and claustrophobic: possible”) as an argument prompt market; at home, their parents are stuffing the humiliation is the most vivid emotion of youth, for students to defend, challenge, den with computers and the garage with a bulky so in memory it becomes the norm. or qualify Denby’s claims about S.U.V. But most teens aren’t thinking about the The movies try to turn the tables. The kids American teens. future job market. Lost in the eternal swoon who cannot be the beautiful ones, or make out of late adolescence, they’re thinking about with them, or avoid being insulted by them — their identity, their friends, and their clothes. these are the heroes of the teen movies, the third Adolescence is the present-tense moment in in the trio of character types. The female outsider American life. Identity and status are fluid: is usually an intellectual or an artist. (She scrib- abrupt, devastating reversals are always pos- bles in a diary, she draws or paints.) Physically sible. (In a teen movie, a guy who swallows a awkward, she walks like a seal crossing a beach, bucket of cafeteria coleslaw can make himself and is prone to drop her books and dither in ter- a hero in an instant.) In these movies, accord- ror when she stands before a handsome boy. Her ingly, the senior prom is the equivalent of the clothes, which ignore mall fashion, scandalize shoot-out at the O.K. Corral; it’s the moment the social queens. Like them, she has a tongue, when one’s worth as a human being is settled but she’s tart and grammatical, tending toward at last. In the rather pedestrian new comedy feminist pungency and precise diction. She may CLOSE READING Never Been Kissed, Drew Barrymore, as a mask her sense of vulnerability with sarcasm You might ask students to twenty-five-year-old newspaper reporter, goes or with Plathian rue (she’s stuck in the bell jar), analyze how the plot description back to high school pretending to be a student, but even when she lashes out she can’t hide her of Never Been Kissed effectively and immediately falls into her old, humiliating craving for acceptance. concludes this section of the pattern of trying to impress the good-looking The male outsider, her friend, is usually a essay. rich kids. Helplessly, she pushes for approval, mass of stuttering or giggling sexual gloom: he and even gets herself chosen prom queen wears shapeless clothes; he has an undeveloped before finally coming to her senses. She finds body, either stringy or shrimpy; he’s some- it nearly impossible to let go. times a Jew (in these movies, still the generic outsider). He’s also brilliant, but in a morose, ◆ ◆ ◆ preoccupied way that suggests masturbatory Genre films dramatize not what happens but how absorption in some arcane system of knowl- things feel — the emotional coloring of memory. edge. In a few special cases, the outsider is not a They fix subjectivity into fable. At actual schools, loser but a disengaged hipster, either saintly or there is no unitary system of status; there are satanic. (Christian Slater has played this role a many groups to be a part of, many places to couple of times.) This outsider wears black and excel (or fail to excel), many avenues of escape keeps his hair long, and he knows how to please and self-definition. And often the movies, too, women. He sees through everything, so he’s revel in the arcana of high-school cliques. In . . . ironic by temperament and genuinely indiffer- Disturbing Behavior, a veteran student lays ent to the opinion of others — a natural aristo- out the cafeteria ethnography for a newcomer: crat, who transcends the school’s contemptible Motorheads, Blue Ribbons, Skaters, Micro-geeks status system. There are whimsical variations (“drug of choice: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief on the outsider figure, too. In the recent History of Time and a cup of jasmine tea on Rushmore, an obnoxious teen hero, Max Fischer 324

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING You may need to explain the allusion to Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar in paragraph 8. Why does Denby name Plath rather than, say, J. D. Salinger here?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 324 22/03/18 11:56 AM Denby (Jason Schwartzman), runs the entire school: a screenwriter. It’s the wound and the bow all TRM KEY PASSAGE he can’t pass his courses but he’s a dynamo over again, in cargo pants. at extracurricular activities, with a knack for As the female nerd attracts the attention of This page contains a rich High-School Confidential staging extraordinary events. He’s a con man, the handsomest boy in the senior class, the teen passage suitable for close read- a fund-raiser, an entrepreneur — in other words, movie turns into a myth of social reversal — a ing. For an annotation handout of this passage, see the Teacher’s a contemporary artist. Cinderella fantasy. Initially, his interest in her Resource Flash Drive. In fact, the entire genre, which combines 10 may be part of a stunt or a trick: he is leading self-pity and ultimate vindication, might be her on, perhaps at the urging of his queenly called “Portrait of the Filmmaker as a Young girlfriend. But his gaze lights her up, and we Nerd.” Who can doubt where Hollywood’s see how attractive she really is. Will she fulfill twitchy, nearsighted writers and directors the eternal specs? She wants her prince, and ranked — or feared they ranked — on the high- by degrees she wins him over, not just with her school totem pole? They are still angry, though looks but with her superior nature, her essential occasionally the target of their resentment goes goodness. In the male version of the Cinderella beyond the jocks and cheerleaders of their trip, a few years go by, and a pale little nerd (we youth. Consider this anomaly: the young actors see him at a reunion) has become rich. All that and models on the covers of half the magazines poking around with chemicals paid off. Max published in this country, the shirtless men with Fischer, of Rushmore, can’t miss being richer chests like burnished shields, the girls smiling, than Warhol. glowing, tweezed, full-lipped, full-breasted (but So the teen movie is wildly ambivalent. It not too full), and with skin so honeyed that it may attack the consumerist ethos that produces seems lacquered — these are the physical ideals winners and losers, but in the end it confirms embodied by the villains of the teen movies. what it is attacking. The girls need the seal of The social queens and jocks, using their looks to approval conferred by the converted jocks; the dominate others, represent an American barba- nerds need money and a girl. Perhaps it’s no sur- CHECK FOR rism of beauty. Isn’t it possible that the detesta- prise that the outsiders can be validated only by UNDERSTANDING tion of them in teen movies is a veiled strike at the people who ostracized them. But let’s not be the entire abs-hair advertising culture, with its too schematic: the outsider who joins the system It’s worth exploring the word unobtainable glories of perfection? A critic of also modifies it, opens it up to the creative power schematic in paragraph 13. Ask consumerism might even see a spark of revolt in of social mobility, makes it bend and laugh, and students to define it, and to these movies. But only a spark. perhaps this turn of events is not so different explain the risks of being “too schematic” (which is often a My guess is that these films arise from from the way things work in the real world, where weakness of student essays on remembered hurts which then get recast in sym- merit and achievement stand a good chance of AP® tests). bolic form. For instance, a surprising number of trumping appearance. The irony of the Littleton the outsider heroes have no mother. Mom has shootings is that Klebold and Harris, who were died or run off with another man; her child, only both proficient computer heads, seemed to have CLOSE READING half loved, is ill equipped for the emotional pres- forgotten how the plot turns out. If they had held Consider asking students to sures of school. The motherless child, of course, on for a few years they might have been working analyze the function of the is a shrewd commercial ploy that makes a direct at a hip software company, or have started their second reference to the appeal to the members of the audience, many of own business, while the jocks who oppressed Columbine murders in whom may feel like outsiders, too, and unloved, them would probably have wound up selling paragraph 13: How does it or not loved enough, or victims of some prejudice insurance or used cars. That’s the one unques- reveal Denby’s purpose? or exclusion. But the motherless child also has tionable social truth the teen movies reflect: powers, and will someday be a success, an artist, geeks rule. TEACHING IDEA The 2008 Form B AP® Language OTHER VOICES 325 test rhetorical analysis question used an editorial by Leonid Fridman titled “America Needs Its Nerds.” You could use that prompt in conversation with CHECK FOR CLOSE READING TEACHING IDEA Denby’s “unquestionable” claim UNDERSTANDING You could use Denby’s phrase Although Denby doesn’t use the that “geeks rule” (para. 13). You may need to explain the allu- “an American barbarism of term in paragraph 11, he is sion to James Joyce’s A Portrait beauty” as a catalyst for students discussing pathos. You may need of the Artist as a Young Man to explore his attitude toward to point this out to students, but (para. 10). This is a good oppor- culture. Ask students to define his this is a good opportunity to tunity to discuss audience: What use of “barbarism,” and then to discuss how Denby’s essay could does this reference suggest support it with evidence from be called a rhetorical analysis of about who Denby is writing for? paragraph 10. the high school movie genre. This activity, which could be brief or extended into an essay, could reinforce the students’ understanding of what rhetorical analysis is.

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Popular Culture seeing connections

These graphs, from a 2016 study entitled “Gender and the Returns to Attractiveness,” show the relationship researchers found between gender, attractiveness, and income. What claim(s) does Denby make that could be challenged by this data? Does Denby make any claims that this data would appear to support? Explain.

The Relationship between Attractiveness, Grooming Habits, and Income

Men Women

Unattractive Unattractive

Average Average

Attractive Attractive

10K 20K 30K 40K 10K 20K 30K 40K Median Income Median Income

Poorly groomed Average Well-groomed

Data from Wong, Jaclyn and Andrew Penner. “Gender and the returns to attractiveness.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, vol. 44, June 2016, pp. 113–123.

◆ ◆ ◆ the school. Carrie is the primal school movie, TEACHING IDEA There is, of course, a menacing subgenre, in so wildly lurid and funny that it exploded the which the desire for revenge turns bloody. clichés of the genre before the genre was quite You might have students debate Thirty-one years ago, Lindsay Anderson’s set: the heroine may be a wrathful avenger, but the purpose of paragraph 14. Is it semi-surrealistic If . . . was set in an oppres- the movie, based on a Stephen King book, was to define a sub-genre or to sive, class-ridden English boarding school, clearly a grinning-gargoyle fantasy. So, at first, develop the discussion of the where a group of rebellious students drive the was Heathers, in which Christian Slater’s satanic Littleton shooters, or something school population out into a courtyard and outsider turns out to be a true devil. He and else? open fire on them with machine guns. In Brian his girlfriend (played by a very young Winona De Palma’s 1976 masterpiece Carrie, the pale, Ryder) begin gleefully knocking off the rich, repressed heroine, played by Sissy Spacek, is nasty girls and the jocks, in ways so patently courted at last by a handsome boy but gets absurd that their revenge seems a mere wicked violated — doused with pig’s blood — just as dream. I think it’s unlikely that these movies she is named prom queen. Stunned but far had a direct effect on the actions of the Littleton from powerless, Carrie uses her telekinetic shooters, but the two boys would surely have powers to set the room afire and burn down recognized the emotional world of Heathers and

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EXPLORING THE TEXT

1. What is David Denby’s opinion of teen movies? 5. The essay makes several appeals to ethos. Denby TRM SUGGESTED Does he find anything redeeming in them? Do you is a well-known film critic. How does he use the agree that it is the “most commercial and frivolous expertise of others — implicitly and explicitly — to RESPONSES of genres” (para. 5)? Explain your response. support his argument? Suggested responses to the 2. Denby mentions three movies that “go beyond 6. What is Denby’s central argument? What are his questions for this reading can be [the] fixed polarities” (para. 15): Clueless, Romy secondary arguments? How does he bring them found on the Teacher’s Resource and Michele’s High School Reunion, and Election. together? Flash Drive. Do you agree? Do any recent teen movies 7. In paragraph 13, Denby argues that the two transcend the genre? Explain. teenage boys who killed classmates, teachers, and 3. What rhetorical strategies does Denby use in the then themselves at Columbine High School did not first paragraph to create a picture of the female learn the lesson of teen movies: “geeks rule.” How villain of teen movies? Consider such strategies does he support this argument? as irony, hyperbole, metaphor, colloquialisms, and 8. Who is the likely audience for this essay? How opposition. What are their effects? does Denby consider audience in his essay? 4. Where do you detect changes in Denby’s tone? How does Denby achieve these changes?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 327 22/03/18 11:56 AM 6 TRM VOCABULARY Popular Culture The Price Is Right A vocabulary exercise based on What Advertising Does to TV challenging words from this reading can be found on the Teacher’s EMILY NUSSBAUM Resource Flash Drive. Emily Nussbaum (b. 1966) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning TV critic for the New Yorker. She was educated at Oberlin College and New York University and has contributed to Slate, the TB MULTIPLE CHOICE New York Times, New York magazine, and has served as the editor-in-chief of Nerve. In For an AP®-style multiple-choice 2014, Nussbaum was awarded a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary, question set on a passage from and in 2016, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. The essay that follows was this reading, see The Language of originally published in the New Yorker in 2015. Composition, Third Edition Test Bank, which is both available in ExamView format and integrated ver since the finale of “Mad Men,” I’ve been the product of “an enlightened state.” To regard it into the e-book. Emeditating on its audacious last image. otherwise, he warned, was itself the symptom of a Don Draper, sitting cross-legged and purring poisonous mind-set. TRM KEY PASSAGE “Ommmm,” is achieving inner peace at an The question of how television fits together Esalen1-like retreat. He’s as handsome as ever, with advertising — and whether we should resist This page contains a rich in khakis and a crisp white shirt. A bell rings, that relationship or embrace it — has haunted passage suitable for close read- and a grin widens across his face. Then, as if the medium since its origins. Advertising is TV’s ing. For an annotation handout of cutting to a sponsor, we move to the iconic Coke original sin. When people called TV shows gar- this passage, see the Teacher’s ad from 1971 — a green hillside covered with a bage, which they did all the time, until recently, Resource Flash Drive. racially diverse chorus of young people, trilling, commercialism was at the heart of the complaint. in harmony, “I’d like to teach the world to sing.” Even great TV could never be good art, because it BUILDING CONTEXT Don Draper, recently suicidal, has invented the was tainted by definition. It was there to sell. While the photos on p. 329 show world’s greatest ad. He’s back, baby. That was the argument made by George W. S. stills from the last scene of Mad The scene triggered a debate online. From Trow in this magazine, in a feverish manifesto Men, you could show students one perspective, the image looked cynical: the called “Within the Context of No Context.” That the clip of the scene and ask viewer is tricked into thinking that Draper has essay, which ran in 1980, became a sensation, as them to comment. You could also achieved Nirvana, only to be slapped with the coruscating denunciations of modernity so often show them the Coke ad from source of his smile. It’s the grin of an adman do. In television, “the trivial is raised up to power,” 1971 (p. 329) and ask them to who has figured out how to use enlightenment Trow wrote. “The powerful is lowered toward the analyze the visual rhetoric of the to peddle sugar water, co-opting the counter- trivial.” Driven by “ demography” — that is, by the iconic commercial. culture as a brand. Yet, from another angle, the corrupting force of money and ratings — television It might also be fruitful to have a discussion with your students scene looked idealistic. Draper has indeed had a treats those who consume it like sales targets, about the role of commercials on spiritual revelation, one that he’s expressing in a encouraging them to view themselves that way. television. Some students may beautiful way — through advertising, his great gift. In one of several sections titled “Celebrities,” he rarely watch live TV with commer- The night the episode aired, it struck me as a dark writes, “The most successful celebrities are prod- cials, which they cannot skip (the joke. But, at a discussion a couple of days later, at ucts. Consider the real role in American life of large exception may be sports the New York Public Library, Matthew Weiner, the Coca-Cola. Is any man as well-loved as this soft events, and a discussion about show’s creator, told the novelist A. M. Homes that drink is?” the popularity of Super Bowl ads viewers should see the hilltop ad as “very pure,” Much of Trow’s essay, which runs to more 5 might prove fruitful too). than a hundred pages, makes little sense. It is 1 A nonprofit retreat center located in California, founded in written in the style of oracular poetry, full of ele- 1962 to support uncommon approaches to examining human TEACHING IDEA mindfulness. —Eds. gant repetitions, elegant repetitions that induce 328 Nussbaum’s discussion returns often to the relationships between a TV series and the audience, and also between the writers for a series and the medium itself. Using the rhetorical triangle (or, perhaps, CLOSE READING TEACHING IDEA SOAPS) to guide your discussions You could have students explore Students could read part or all of Nussbaum characterizes it? Is would be useful. You might start by the meanings of the biblical allu- Trow’s essay — or you could she imitating it or parodying it? having students explore the possi- sion (“original sin”) in paragraph divide it among small groups — to You could also ask students to ble elements at play in a TV series if 3. Ask them to suggest at least summarize his arguments and/or contrast Nussbaum’s prose style looked at through the lens of the three ways the allusion could to examine his prose style and in the rest of the essay with rhetorical triangle. Students could apply, and how the allusion compare their own assessments Trow’s. Does she successfully brainstorm ideas for triangles for contributes to Nussbaum’s tone. to Nussbaum’s. How does avoid the faults in his essay that the script writers, for the network, Nussbaum’s prose style in para- she identifies in paragraph 5? for the advertisers. Doing so could graph 5 compare to Trow’s, as suggest to the students some of the complexities that Nussbaum explores throughout her essay.

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Emily Nussbaum opens her essay with a discussion of the last scene of the series

Mad Men. Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, is seen meditating at a retreat in Big Sur. He The Price Is Right utters the syllable “om” along with the rest of the group and smiles mysteriously. Just as the camera has finished zooming in on his face, the iconic 1971 Coca Cola commercial, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke,” plays in its entirety. The commercial features a folk song and ends with the chorus, “It’s the real thing.” The scene has been read many ways; how does Nussbaum use it to comment on the effects of advertising on television?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 329 22/03/18 11:56 AM 6 a hypnotic effect, elegant repetitions that suggest summer came not from HBO or AMC but from a Popular Culture authority through their wonderful numbing pair of lightweight cable networks whose slogans rhythms, but which contain few facts. It’s élitism might as well be “Please underestimate us”: in the guise of hipness. It is more nostalgic than Lifetime, with “Unreal,” and USA Network, with “Mad Men” ever was for the era when Wasp men “Mr. Robot.” That there is a summer season at all in hats ran New York. It’s a screed against TV is a new phenomenon. This fall, as the networks written at the medium’s low point — after the launch a bland slate of pilots, we know there are energy of the sitcoms of the seventies had faded better options. but before the innovations of the nineties — and A couple of months ago, at a meeting of the it paints TV fans as brainwashed dummies. Television Critics Association, the C.E.O. of FX, And yet there’s something in Trow’s mani- John Landgraf, delivered a speech about “peak CHECK FOR festo that I find myself craving these days: that TV,” in which he lamented the exponential rise UNDERSTANDING rude resistance to being sold to, the insistence in production: three hundred and seventy-one It might be worth asking students that there is, after all, such a thing as selling out. scripted shows last year, more than four hundred to define “selling out” (para. 6). Those of us who love TV have won the war. The expected this year — a bubble, Landgraf said, What does the phrase mean for best scripted shows are regarded as significant that would surely deflate. He got some pushback: Nussbaum here? But also, what art — debated, revered, denounced. TV show- Why now, when the door had cracked open to does it mean in other contexts, runners are embraced as heroes and role models, more than white-guy antiheroes, was it “too both in popular culture and for an even philosophers. At the same time, television’s much” for viewers? But just as worrisome was the individual? Students could write a business model is in chaos, splintered and second part of Landgraf’s speech, in which he short definition of the term. re-forming itself, struggling with its own history. wondered how the industry could fund so much Making television has always meant bending to TV. What was the model, now that the pie had CLOSE READING the money — and TV history has taught us to be been sliced into slivers? When Landgraf took his The last sentence of paragraph 6 cool with any compromise. But sometimes we’re job, in 2005, ad buys made up more than fifty per may puzzle students, and its knowing about things that we don’t know much cent of FX’s revenue, he said. Now that figure was position at the end of the essay’s about at all. thirty-two per cent. When ratings drop, ad rates first section prioritizes its impor- drop, too, and when people fast-forward produc- tance. Ask students to examine ◆ ◆ ◆ ers look for new forms of access: through apps, paragraph 6 to identify what Once upon a time, TV made sense, economically through data mining, through deals that shape “things” refers to. and structurally: a few dominant network shows the shows we see, both visibly and invisibly. ran weekly, with ads breaking them up, like Some of this involves the ancient art of product choruses between verses. Then came pay cable, integration, by which sponsors buy the right to the VCR, the DVD, the DVR, and the Internet. be part of the story: these are the ads that can’t At this point, the model seems to morph every be fast-forwarded. six months. Oceanic flat screens give way to This is both a new crisis and an old one. palm-size iPhones. A cheap writer-dominated When television began, it was a live medium. medium absorbs pricey Hollywood directors. Replicating radio, it was not merely supported by You can steal TV; you can buy TV; you can get it admen; it was run by them. In TV’s early years, free. Netflix, a distributor, becomes a producer. there were no showrunners: the person with ulti- On Amazon, customers vote for which pilots will mate authority was the product representative, survive. Shows cancelled by NBC jump to Yahoo, the guy from Lysol or Lucky Strike. Beneath that which used to be a failing search engine. The two man (always a man) was a network exec. A layer most ambitious and original début series this down were writers, who were fungible, nameless

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BUILDING CONTEXT CHECK FOR In paragraph 7, Nussbaum offers UNDERSTANDING a capsule summary of recent Students might need to check the developments in the television meaning of “ad buys” and “ad industry. You might ask students rates” in paragraph 8. They might to position themselves in that also check other terms in the chronology: What developments paragraph, such as “forms of in television have they experi- access” and “data mining.” How enced in their lifetimes? Have effective is this jargon in making there been any more recent Nussbaum’s point? developments in the medium?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 330 22/03/18 11:56 AM Nussbaum figures, with the exception of people like Paddy integrated advertising” — “plugola” was par for CLOSE READING Chayefsky, machers2 who often retreated when the course. (Benny once mentioned Schwinn To get students thinking about they grew frustrated by the industry’s censorious bikes, then looked directly into the camera how Nussbaum uses outside limits. The result was that TV writers developed and deadpanned, “Send three.”) There were sources, you could ask them to a complex mix of pride and shame, a sense only a few exceptions, including Sid Caesar, The Price Is Right look at how the examples she that they were hired hands, not artists. It was a who refused to tout brands on “Your Show includes from the Samuel book in working-class model of creativity. The shows of Shows.” paragraphs 11 and 12 might might be funny or beautiful, but their creators Sponsors were a conservative force. They support his subtitle, “Postwar would never own them. helped blacklist writers suspected of being Television Advertising and the Advertisements shaped everything about 10 Communists, and, for decades, banned plots American Dream,” and how they early television programs, including their length about homosexuality and “miscegenation.” are relevant to Nussbaum’s own and structure, with clear acts to provide logical In Jeff Kisseloff’s oral history “The Box,” from argument. inlets for ads to appear. Initially, there were rules 1995, Bob Lewine, of ABC, describes pitch- governing how many ads could run: the indus- ing Sammy Davis, Jr., in an all-black variety try standard was six minutes per hour. (Today, show: Young & Rubicam execs walked out, on network, it’s about fourteen minutes.) But so the idea was dropped. This tight leash this didn’t include the vast amounts of product affected even that era’s version of prestige TV. integration that were folded into the scripts. In “Brought to You By,” Samuel lists topics (Product placement, which involves props, was deemed off limits as “politics, sex, adultery, a given.) Viewers take for granted that this is unemployment, poverty, successful crim- native to the medium, but it’s unique to the U.S.; inality and alcohol” — now the basic food in the United Kingdom, such deals were pro- groups of cable. In one notorious incident, the hibited until 2011. Even then, they were barred American Gas Association sponsored CBS’s from the BBC, banned for alcohol and junk food, anthology series “Playhouse 90.” When an and required to be visibly declared — a “P” must episode called “Portrait of a Murderer” ended, appear onscreen. it created an unfortunate juxtaposition: after In “Brought to You By: Postwar Television the killer was executed, the show cut to an ad Advertising and the American Dream,” with the slogan “Nothing but gas does so many Lawrence R. Samuel describes early shows jobs so well.” Spooked, American Gas took a like NBC’s “Coke Time,” in which Eddie Fisher closer look at an upcoming project, George sipped the soda. On an episode of “I Love Roy Hill’s “Judgment at Nuremberg.” The Lucy” called “The Diet,” Lucy and Desi smoked company objected to any mention of the gas Philip Morris cigarettes. On “The Flintstones,” chambers — and though the writers resisted, the sponsor Alka-Seltzer ruled that no char- the admen won. acter get a stomach ache, and that there be no This sponsor-down model held until the CLOSE READING derogatory presentations of doctors, dentists, late fifties, around the time that the quiz- or druggists. On “My Little Margie,” Philip show scandals traumatized viewers: pro- Ask students to explore Morris reps struck the phrase “I’m real cool!,” ducers, in their quest to please ad reps, had Nussbaum’s claim in the last two lest it be associated with their competitors cheated. Both economic pressures and the sentences of paragraph 13 by Kool cigarettes. If you were a big name — like public mood contributed to increased creative paraphrasing them and discuss- Jack Benny, whom Samuel calls “the king of control by networks, as the old one-sponsor ing their application to TV. You model dissolved. But the precedent had been might then extend discussion of that claim to its applicability to 2 Yiddish: a mover and shaker. —Eds. established: when people talked about TV, other genres in popular culture: Can the same be said of pop OTHER VOICES 331 music, of movies, of computer video games, or is TV different? See paragraph 29 for a similar point.

TEACHING IDEA TEACHING IDEA You could have students use Students could debate whether Nussbaum’s claim: “It was a the United States should adopt working-class model of creativ- Britain’s policy of identifying ity” in paragraph 9 as a discus- product placement during TV sion prompt. How does she apply shows (para. 10). You could class assumptions to the writers divide the class into pro and con of early TV shows in this para- groups (you could also include a graph? third group to argue it should be banned) and ask them to brainstorm supporting arguments; you could also extend the project to include research.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 331 22/03/18 11:56 AM 6 ratings and quality were existentially linked, “House of Cards,” trading supplies of booze for Popular Culture the business and the art covered by critics as onscreen appearances; purportedly, Samsung one thing. Or, as Trow put it, “What is loved is a struck another, to be the show’s “tech of choice.” hit. What is a hit is loved.” Unilever’s Choco Taco paid for integration on ◆ ◆ ◆ Comedy Central’s “Workaholics,” aiming to be “the dessert for millennials.” On NBC, Dan Kenya Barris’s original concept for the Harmon’s avant-garde comedy, “Community,” TEACHING IDEA ABC series “Black-ish,” last year’s smartest featured an anti-corporate plot about Subway You could suggest that students network-sitcom début, was about a black writer paid for by Subway. When the show jumped to watch an episode or two of a in a TV writers’ room. But then he made the Yahoo, the episode “Advanced Safety Features” network TV show to see if they lead role a copywriter at an ad agency, which was about Honda. “It’s not there were just a can spot any examples of prod- allowed the network to cut a deal with Buick, so couple of guys driving the car; it was the whole uct integration and if they can see that the show’s hero, Dre, is seen brainstorming episode about Honda,” Tom Peyton, an assistant any relationship between the ads for its car. In Automotive News, Buick’s mar- V.P. of marketing at Honda, told Ad Week. “You types of ads run during the show keting manager, Molly Peck, said that the com- hold your breath as an advertiser, and I’m sure and their content or target audi- pany worked closely with Barris. “We get the they did too — did you go too far and commer- ence. In what ways has benefit of being part of the program, so people cialize the whole thing and take it away from Nussbaum’s essay raised are actually watching it as opposed to advertis- it? — but I think the opposite happened. . . . students’ awareness? ing where viewers often don’t watch it.” Huge positives.” Product integration is a small slice of the 15 Whether that bothers you or impresses CLOSE READING advertising budget, but it can take on outsized you may depend on whether you laughed and Paragraphs 14–16 are loaded symbolic importance, as the watermark of a whether you noticed. There’s a common notion with examples. Ask students to sponsor’s power to alter the story — and it is that there’s good and bad integration. The “bad” analyze their relevance: Why often impossible to tell whether the mention stuff is bumptious — unfunny and in your face. does Nussbaum include so is paid or not. “The Mindy Project” celebrates “Good” integration is either invisible or ironic, many? (You might point out that Tinder. An episode of “Modern Family” takes and it’s done by people we trust, like Stephen she does not always include lists place on iPods and iPhones. On the ABC Family Colbert or Tina Fey. But it brings out my inner of evidence.) Do they all function drama “The Fosters,” one of the main characters, George Trow. To my mind, the cleverer the inte- to make the same argument, or a viceprincipal, talks eagerly about the tablets gration, the more harmful it is. It’s a sedative do they vary? her school is buying. “Wow, it’s so light!” she designed to make viewers feel that there’s noth- says, calling the product by its full name, the ing to be angry about, to admire the ad inside the “Kindle Paperwhite e-reader,” and listing its story, to train us to shrug off every compromise useful features. On last year’s most charming as necessary and normal. début drama, the CW’s “Jane the Virgin,” charac- Self-mocking integration used to seem ters make trips to Target, carry Target bags, and modern to me — the irony of a post-“ Simpsons” prominently display the logo. generation — until I realized that it was actu- Those are shows on channels that are explic- ally nostalgic: Jack Benny did sketches in itly commercialized. But similar deals ripple which he playfully “resisted” sponsors like through cable television and the new streaming Lucky Strike and Lipton tea. Alfred Hitchcock, producers. FX cut a deal with MillerCoors, so on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” made snide that every character who drinks or discusses a remarks about Bristol-Myers. The audience beer is drinking its brands. (MillerCoors designs had no idea that those wisecracks were scripted retro bottles for “The Americans.”) According by a copywriter who had submitted them to to Ad Age, Anheuser-Busch struck a deal with Bristol-Myers for approval. 332

TEACHING IDEA Some students may be dismis- a limit of a hundred words, and sive of the potential impact of have them include twenty or product integration. It’s worth fewer quoted words. having them explore Nussbaum’s Ask students to examine reservations as she presents Nussbaum’s use of the first them in paragraphs 17–19. Ask person in this section, too: How them to summarize Nussbaum’s does it affect her ethos? Why concerns, as expressed in these introduce it here? paragraphs; you might give them

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 332 22/03/18 11:56 AM Nussbaum A few weeks ago, Stephen Colbert began Were any of these mentions paid for? Not TEACHING IDEA hosting CBS’s “Late Show.” In his first show, he in the first season — although Esmail says that In paragraphs 20–22 Nussbaum pointed to a “cursed” amulet. He was under he did pursue integrations with brands, some explores the complex layers of the amulet’s control, Colbert moaned, and of which turned him down and some of which Mr. Robot. Ask students to look thus had been forced to “make certain” — he he turned down (including tech companies that The Price Is Right at these paragraphs through the paused — “regrettable compromises.” Then he demanded “awkward language” about their lens of SOAPS or the rhetorical did a bit in which he slavered over Sabra hummus features). He’s open to these deals in Season 2. triangle to examine Mr. Robot as and Rold Gold pretzels. Some critics described “If the idea is to inspire an interesting debate over a text (at least as Nussbaum the act as satire, but that’s a distinction without a capitalism, I actually think (depending on how presents it). She does a lot with difference. Colbert embraced “sponsortunities” we use it) it can help provoke that conversation the complexity of the speaker. when he was on Comedy Central, too, behind even more,” he said. As long as such arrange- Discussing SOAPS will help them the mask of an ironic persona; it’s likely one fac- ments are “organic and not forced,” they’re fine understand Nussbaum’s argu- tor that made him a desirable replacement for with him — what’s crucial is not the money but ment in this section and encour- Letterman, the worst salesman on late-night TV. the verisimilitude that brands provide. Only one age them to see the analysis During this summer of industry chaos, 20 major conflict came up, Esmail said, in the finale, technique as something that can one TV show did make a pungent case against when Elliott’s mysterious alter ego screams in the be integrated purposefully into an consumerism: “Mr. Robot,” on USA Network. middle of Times Square, “I’m no less real than essay. A dystopian thriller with Occupy-inflected the fucking meat patty in your Big Mac.” Esmail politics, the series was refreshing, both for its and USA agreed to bleep “Big Mac” — “to be CHECK FOR melancholy beauty and for its unusually direct sensitive to ad sales,” Esmail told me — but they UNDERSTANDING attack on corporate manipulation. “Mr. Robot” left it in for online airings. Esmail said he’s con- You might ask students if was the creation of a TV newcomer, Sam Esmail, fident that the network fought for him. “Maybe Nussbaum’s discussion of Mr. who found himself in an odd position: his anti- Comcast has a relationship with McDonald’s?” Robot (or her essay as a whole) is branding show was itself rebranding an aggres- he mused. (USA told me that the reason was an example of “an interesting sively corporate network, known for its “blue “standards and practices.”) debate over capitalism” (para. sky” procedurals — a division of NBCUniversal, a ◆ ◆ ◆ 22). Can they think of other subsidiary of Comcast. examples of television shows “Mr. Robot” tells the story of Elliott Alderson, “Are you asking me how I feel about product (either current or past) that corporate cog by day, hacker by night, a mentally integration?” Matt Weiner said. “I’m for it.” consciously address this debate? unstable junkie who is part of an Anonymous- Everything on TV is an ad for something, he like collective that conspires to delete global pointed out, down to Jon Hamm’s beautifully CHECK FOR debt. In one scene, Elliott fantasizes about being pomaded hair — and he argued that a paid inte- UNDERSTANDING conventional enough for a girlfriend: “I’ll go see gration is far less harmful than other propaganda You might ask students to those stupid Marvel movies with her. I’ll join a embedded in television, such as how cop shows explore the meaning of “danger- gym. I’ll heart things on Instagram.” He walks celebrate the virtues of the state. We all have our ous” (para. 23), according to into his boss’s office with a Starbucks vanilla sponsors. Michelangelo painted for the Pope! Weiner. Does Nussbaum agree latte, the most basic of beverages. This sort of What’s dangerous about modern TV isn’t adver- with his claim? straightforwardly hostile namecheck is generally tisers, Weiner told me; it’s creatives not getting taboo, both to avoid offending potential sponsors enough of a cut of the proceeds. and to leave doors open for their competitors. Weiner used to work in network television, Esmail says he fought to get real brands in the in a more restrictive creative environment, until story, citing “Mad Men” as precedent, as his he got his break, on “The Sopranos.” Stepping phone calls with the network’s lawyers went from into HBO’s subscription-only chamber meant “weekly to daily.” being part of a prestige brand: no ads, that

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CHECK FOR TEACHING IDEA UNDERSTANDING To follow up on the SOAPS/ Students might not understand rhetorical triangle work with the phrase “a distinction without Mr. Robot (see Teaching Idea, a difference” (para. 19), so a p. 333), you might have students quick discussion could be useful. do something similar with You might ask students to brain- Nussbaum’s discussion of Mad storm a few examples of distinc- Men in paragraphs 24–28. Ask tions without differences. To what them to explain the extent to extent is this in the eye of the which Nussbaum expects her beholder? audience to be familiar with the series.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 333 22/03/18 11:56 AM 6 gorgeous hissing logo, critical bennies. The Esmail’s show, which he called American TV’s Popular Culture move to AMC, then a minor cable station, was “first truly contemporary anti-corporate mes- a challenge. Weiner longed for the most elegant sage.” Then again, he said, “show business in model, with one sponsor — the approach of general has been very good at co-opting the “Playhouse 90.” But getting ads took hustle, even people that bite the hands that feed them.” in a show about them. Weiner’s description of NBCUniversal was wise to buy into Esmail’s rad- the experience of writing integrations is full of ical themes, he said, because these are ideas that cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, he said, the audience is ready for — “even the Tea Party wistfully, he didn’t realize at first that he could knows we don’t want to give the country over to say no to integrations. Yet he was frustrated by corporations.” the ones he couldn’t get, like attaching Revlon Weiner made clear that Coke hadn’t paid to Peggy’s “Basket of Kisses” plot about lipstick. for any integration; he mentioned it a few times. Such deals were valuable — “money you don’t Finally, I asked, Why not? “Mad Men” ended in leave on the floor” — but it was crucial that the a way that both Coke and viewers could admire. audience not know about them, and that there Why not take the money? Two reasons, he said. be few. First, Coca-Cola could “get excited and start The first integration on “Mad Men,” for 25 making demands.” But, really, he didn’t want Jack Daniel’s, was procured before Weiner got to “disturb the purity of treating that ad as what involved; writing it into the script made him feel it was.” Weiner is proud that “Mad Men” had “icky.” (Draper wouldn’t drink Jack Daniel’s, a lasting legacy, influencing how viewers saw Weiner told me.) Pond’s cold cream was a more television’s potential, how they thought about successful fit. But he tried to impose rules: the money and power, creativity and the nature of sponsor could see only the pages its brand was work. He didn’t want them to think that Coke had on; dialogue would mention competitors; and, bought his finale. most important, the company couldn’t run ads ◆ ◆ ◆ the night its episode was on the air. Unilever cheated, Weiner claimed — and AMC allowed it. There is no art form that doesn’t run a three- The company filmed ads mimicking the “Mad legged race with the sponsors that support Men” aesthetic, making the tie with the show visits production, and the weaker an industry ible. If viewers knew that Pond’s was integrated, gets (journalism, this means you; music, too) they wouldn’t lose themselves in the story, the more ethical resistance flags. But readers Weiner worried. would be grossed out to hear that Karl Ove In the end, he says, he did only three — Knausgaard3 had accepted a bribe to put the Heineken was the third (an integration procured Talking Heads into his childhood memories. after Michelob backed out). I naïvely remarked They’d be angry if Stephen Sondheim4 slipped that Jaguar couldn’t have paid: who would want a Dewar’s jingle into “Company.” That’s not to be the brand of sexual coercion? “You’d be sur- priggishness or élitism. It’s a belief that art is prised,” he said. Jaguar didn’t buy a plug, but the powerful, that storytelling is real, that when we company loved the plot — and hired Christina immerse ourselves in that way it’s a vulnerable Hendricks to flack the car, wearing a bright-red pantsuit. Weiner had spent the Television Critics 3 A contemporary Norwegian writer, known for writing a series of six Association convention talking up “Mr. Robot” autobiographical novels entitled My Struggle. —Eds. 4 A widely celebrated contemporary composer and lyricist, known and he told me that he was “stunned” by primarily for his work on several major Broadway musicals. —Eds. 334

TEACHING IDEA Nussbaum’s claims about the Nussbaum means by “trust” and relationship between readers and “vulnerable” in this paragraph, art at the end of paragraph 29 and how that could apply to the merit exploration. Here again the expectations an audience has of rhetorical triangle might be worth art (e.g., a song or a memoir) as a applying to discuss the relation- text. You could use this discus- ship between text and audience: sion to add layers of complexity Ask students to explain what to the analysis strategy.

334 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 334 22/03/18 11:56 AM Nussbaum act of trust. Why wouldn’t this be true for like innocence. There’s something to be said for TEACHING IDEA television, too? the emotions that Trow tapped into, disgust and Viewers have little control over how any show 30 outrage and betrayal — emotions that can be Nussbaum synthesizes her argu- gets made; TV writers and directors have only embarrassing but are useful when we’re faced ment in the essay’s last two paragraphs, referring back to many of a bit more — their roles mingle creativity and with something ugly. The Price Is Right her earlier points but expressing management in a way that’s designed to create Perhaps this makes me sound like a drunken her position more explicitly. confusion. Even the experts lack expertise, these twenty-two-year-old waving a battered copy of Students could explore days. But I wonder if there’s a way for us to be less Naomi Klein’s “No Logo.”5 But that’s what hap- Nussbaum’s overall purpose by comfortable as consumers, to imagine ourselves pens when you love an art form. In my imagina- unpacking claims in the last two as the partners not of the advertisers but of the tion, television would be capable of anything. It paragraphs (sentence by artists — to crave purity, naïve as that may sound. could offend anyone; it could violate any rule. For sentence, or so) and rearranging I miss “Mad Men,” that nostalgic meditation on it to get there, we might have to expect of it what them in a hierarchical order, nostalgia. But embedded in its vision was the we expect of any art. according to their priority in the notion that television writing and copywriting [2015] essay as a whole. For instance, are and should be mirrors, twins. Our comfort 5 A 1999 nonfiction book by Canadian cultural critic Naomi Klein that part of Nussbaum’s essay with being sold to may look like savvy, but it feels explores the negative consequences of consumerism. —Eds. demonstrates her appreciation of Mad Men, but that would not be a very high point on the list. Students, individually or in EXPLORING THE TEXT groups, could create a list and 1. How does Emily Nussbaum establish credibility? changes she mentions? What has changed since then write a summary defending Try to provide at least three different examples. this essay’s publication in 2015? their choices. They could then 2. Nussbaum begins her essay with a description of 7. Identify at least two different types of evidence compare their lists and discuss the last scene of the series Mad Men, which she Nussbaum uses to develop her argument. How do their differing viewpoints. comes back to several times in the essay. As she they serve her purpose? How do they reflect the notes, it’s a scene that can be read several ways. assumptions she makes about her audience? TRM SUGGESTED How does she use it to develop her argument? 8. What is Nussbaum’s view of “product integration” RESPONSES Trace Nussbaum’s use of the scene throughout the (para. 8)? How does it relate to her central essay, noting the different ways she presents it as argument? Suggested responses to the evidence. 9. In paragraph 29 Nussbaum compares television questions for this reading can be 3. What are some of the observations Nussbaum to other arts, such as fiction and musical theater, found on the Teacher’s Resource makes about the relationship between television noting that “art is powerful, that storytelling is Flash Drive. and advertising? Find at least three examples that real, that when we immerse ourselves in that way illustrate her observations of that relationship. it’s a vulnerable act of trust.” She asks why this 4. How would you describe the tone of The Price Is wouldn’t be true for television. How does she Right? How is that tone created? answer this question? What is your answer to 5. How does Nussbaum use George W. S. Trow’s the question? “manifesto,” “Within the Context of No Context,” 10. How does Nussbaum characterize the influence of an essay she says “makes little sense,” (para. 5) as advertising on early TV? Compare her views on the both a counterargument and as evidence for her older model to her view of the modern practice of own argument? product integration. Which does she consider the 6. Summarize the history of television advertising as lesser of two evils, and why? Nussbaum portrays it. What are the most recent

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TRM VOCABULARY Popular Culture How the Motorcycle Jacket Lost Its Cool and Found A vocabulary exercise based on It Again challenging words from this reading can be found on the Teacher’s TROY PATTERSON Resource Flash Drive. Troy Patterson is an American writer who was born in Virginia, educated at Princeton, and now lives in New York City. Patterson covers a range of topics for several outlets, TB MULTIPLE including books for National Public Radio, TV for Slate, film for Spin, and luxury products CHOICE for Bloomberg. He has contributed criticism to numerous other magazines, including the For an AP®-style multiple-choice New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Men’s Vogue, Wired, and question set on a passage from Entertainment Weekly. The following article, which explores the shifting cultural significance this reading, see The Language of of the biker jacket, was originally published in the New York Times in 2015. Composition, Third Edition Test Bank, which is both available in ExamView format and integrated ut at dinner one recent night, I watched we had updated ancient beliefs associating into the e-book. Othe couple at the next table drift into a animal hides and magical powers to suit our moment of ultralight petting. She had on a secular rituals. TEACHING IDEA black leather motorcycle jacket, and he was On an autumn afternoon of what fashion For a Grammar as Rhetoric and toying, not quite idly, with the zipper at the blogs call ‘‘leather weather,’’ I drifted south Style workshop on Direct, Precise, cuff of its tapered right sleeve. The chain of the down Madison Avenue past boutiques where and Active Verbs featuring this zipper caught the candlelight, as did the supple shopgirls who abbreviate motorcycle jacket reading, see Appendix A, p. 1145. surface of the leather, which seemed as soft to ‘‘moto’’ wore cropped motos on the job. At as lambskin and poorly suited for riding (let 68th Street, on a screen in the window at the TEACHING IDEA alone very suddenly not riding) a bike down luxury-sportswear store Belstaff, David Beckham You might begin by asking the blacktop. But her cuff could zip shut to wore a mandarin-collared racing jacket to preen students to discuss, or freewrite seal out the wind, and he was playing with its through the night scape of a promotional film. At about, their perceptions of leather pull. Zip, and then unzip; he was enchanted. a sidewalk cafe near 62nd, two women lunched jackets. Do they own one? Would I had seen motorcycle jackets look sharp, hard, performatively, each reflecting the other’s moto they like to? What kind of person camp, goonish, and corny, but this cuteness in her shades. At 61st Street, I stepped into wears them? Then, you might was new to me, and perhaps to the jacket, a Barneys, where motorcycle jackets priced up distinguish the broad category of garment that keeps compounding its power to to $5,000 waited to seduce shoppers who were leather jackets from motorcycle activate imaginations. already wearing motorcycle jackets, the hardware jackets specifically. You could The classic motorcycle jacket — double- of which coordinated with the buckles on their show the students pictures of breasted, distinguished by an asymmetric front bootees, the chains on their purses, the gleams some examples, or it might be fun zipper and ample lapels — was pioneered by in their eyes. to send them “shopping” for one: Irving Schott in 1928. (People tend to abuse I felt a need to put one on. What’s that if they have devices, have them Schott’s trademark, Perfecto, as a generic ref- jacket? Margiela, a fashion house based in Paris, search for motorcycle jackets and erence to any of the countless models inspired intended it as a replica of a 1950s Perfecto, then choose one. They could then by its cut.) With its aerodynamic geometry according to a label sewn into a quilted red lining write about why they chose it, and and lavish romance of machines, the design as rich as a juicy secret. Was I trying this on or what impression they would hope exemplifies Art Deco values, a polished mod- was I auditioning for it? Zipped up and belted in, it conveyed. They could do this ernism no more likely to grow tiresome than the cased in black calfskin, studded with silvertone activity before reading the essay Chrysler Building. Leather seems to animate snap heads, I felt armored, cosseted, insulated or after — or both: select a jacket, this industrial form with a primal spirit, as if against the world and its mundanity. In the then read the essay, then evaluate their choice. (If you own a leather 336 jacket, you might wear it to class.)

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING You could ask students to define BUILDING CONTEXT CLOSE READING “cuteness” (para. 1) in context. Students might not know what The last sentence of paragraph 2 analyze the effect of Patterson’s Does Patterson mean something Patterson means by “Art Deco merits analysis. Ask students to diction. different by it than what students values” (para. 2). They could look paraphrase the claim and then to take to be the word’s usual mean- up characteristics (or you could ing? How do they know? have them craft a footnote defini- TEACHING IDEA tion, which is a useful skill, too). They could then explain how You might ask students to juxta- based on such diction choices. those “values” correspond to pose the tones of paragraphs 3 and Then, ask them how his tone Patterson’s description of the 4. To help guide their discussion, changes in paragraph 4 when he original motorcycle jacket. you can ask them to look for words tries on the jacket. Finally, ask them with negative connotations in para- to analyze the rhetorical purpose of graph 3 (“preen,” for example), and the juxtaposition. How does this then to define Patterson’s tone shift in tone serve his argument? 336 The Language of Composition

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 336 22/03/18 11:56 AM Patterson mirror, Narcissus1 was tingling. The thrust of the epaulets alone was good for a jolt of eupho- Troy Patterson argues that Marlon Brando, in ria. The motorcycle jacket encourages a sense The Wild One, was “exaggerating an old standard of of confidence in its inhabitant. Foremost, it male beauty to arrive at a new ideal of neoclassical How the Motorcycle Jacket Lost Its Cool and Found It Again confirms the least suspicion that he has the brass beefcake.” to this pull off. What elements of this image of Brando support The motorcyclist of the popular 5 his observation? imagination mutated from a genial daredevil into a diabolical marauder over the course of Independence Day weekend in 1947. Reviving a tradition of the 1930s, the town of Hollister, Calif., hosted a bike rally that got out of hand, swollen with men returned from the war and disturbing the peace. That the motorcycle club at the center of the action was called the Boozefighters indicates the flavor of the may- hem. Reporters covered the disorder as an epic of looting and pillage; a writer named Frank Rooney converted it into ‘‘Cyclists’ Raid,’’ a short story published in Harper’s Magazine. Rooney’s protagonist wore a brown wind- breaker, but the film producer Stanley Kramer, adapting the story into ‘‘The Wild One,’’ had a rather more vivid idea of how to outfit an antihero. Here was Marlon Brando, in a Schott Perfecto, prowling the frame, exaggerating Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images an old standard of male beauty to arrive at a new ideal of neoclassical beefcake. The film commanding adoration. Brando’s jacket — until debuted in 1953 — the year Elvis Presley made then most notable as the protective gear of his earliest recordings and the first color TVs aviators and highway patrolmen — became an went on sale — and likewise announced the institution on the strength of the way he wore opening of a new era in imagery. it. Together they made a meme — a look swiftly ‘‘The Wild One’’ has not aged well, but that mimicked, cloned, valorized, spoofed, appro- scarcely matters. Brando’s mumbles articu- priated by couturiers and silk-screened by Andy lated a style of spite, and his poses in publicity Warhol in a series of works that must constitute stills shaped a creed of cool that does not age at its sanctification. In ‘‘Four Marlons,’’ Warhol all. Having hurtled into a Nowheresville of an printed one still in quadruplicate on a raw linen Anytown, he is hypermasculine and stereotypi- canvas evocative of gold. Here was a personality cally feminine at once as he leans on the bike, a to build a cult around. brute with the grace of an odalisque on a divan, Just as actual 1930s gangsters aped the style of characters played by the actor George Raft, real-life delinquents turned to black leather. You didn’t need 1 A character in Greek mythology who saw his reflection in a pool, fell a motorcycle to be in a ‘‘motorcycle gang,’’ accord- in love with his own beauty, and died there, unable to tear his eyes away. —Eds. ing to the moral-panicky logic of the day. What is

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CLOSE READING Paragraph 6 is dense with detail and ideas. Students could use it to practice their rhetorical analysis skills by identifying at least one feature in each sentence to define and to connect to purpose. Or, you could divide the paragraph among groups, giving each one a sentence or two to analyze.

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TRM KEY PASSAGE Popular Culture

This page contains a rich While Troy Patterson does mention passage suitable for close read- motorcycle gangs in his discussion ing. For an annotation handout of of the history of the leather jacket, this passage, see the Teacher’s he does not bring up modern-day Resource Flash Drive. bikers such as the Hells Angels, which has 444 charters on five continents, according to its website. To what extent do these modern bikers challenge the claims Patteson makes about the evolution of the leather jacket? Why do you think Patterson does not discuss them? Scott Olson/Getty Images

more, you didn’t even need a gang to enjoy the aura explored leather’s sculptural properties in the ser- of a gangster, a fact attested by the many teenage vice of high fashion, and the followers of pop stars rebels whose acquisition of a motorcycle jacket who, in simply sliding on the real McCoy, showed constituted the full extent of their rebellion. But a knack for exploiting gender fluidity. An edu- for pseudogangs — that is, for rock bands and teen cated guess says that the motorcycle jacket began cliques devoted to them — the motorcycle jacket to be androgynized in earnest in the 1990s — an is an international uniform impervious to obso- era, not coincidentally, when it seemed broadly lescence. It is a garb for all tribes: goths in Kenya; unacceptable for an adult male to wear a motor- rockabillies in Japan; you in your youth, wherever cycle jacket unless he was actively playing a guitar you wasted it. solo. For a while there, the jacket looked like an Its signal plays on many frequencies, expand- affront to ‘‘authenticity’’ and stank, in its garish BUILDING CONTEXT ing its meanings when garbled. Writing about the slick machismo, like a palmful of Drakkar Noir. But You could show pictures of the Ramones,2 the critic Tom Carson once sketched the years of wear by women entailed a rearrangement Ramones (the album covers of dynamics of the masquerade: ‘‘Their leather jackets of significations and made this jacket safe for men. The Ramones, Rocket to Russia, and strung-out, streetwise pose weren’t so much And now, when a guy walks his dog while wearing and Road to Ruin are especially an imitation of Brando in ‘The Wild One’ as a very black leather over a gray hoodie, it isn’t risible. good for this exercise), and ask self-conscious parody — they knew how phony it Now, when a guy whose line of work is in ‘‘the students how the images support was for them to take on those tough-guy trappings, financial-technology space’’ turns up at a meet- Carson’s claims. They could and that incongruousness was exactly what made ing in the guise of a tough, it sort of works for his explore what Carson means by the pose so funny and true.’’ The Ramones’ imitators disruptive personal brand. Recently, beneath the saying the band’s image could be did not necessarily get this, and instead, reading the headline ‘‘Why Every Man Needs a Biker Jacket,’’ “funny and true” (para. 8) simulta- self-parody as an uncomplicated statement of force, a writer for The Telegraph confessed, ‘‘I fell in love neously, too. copied that. . . . with an inanimate object,” which satisfies the defi- Over decades, women annexed this male nition of a fetish for both Freud and Marx, to the program by degrees. Early colonists included shame of no one in particular. We’re all posers. the clients of designers who, riffing on the jacket, The modern woman in a motorcycle jacket 10 tends to be a postmodern woman, her ward- robe a workshop for practicing pastiche, the 2 An American punk-rock band, prominent from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. —Eds. jacket organizing other fragments of reference 338

TEACHING IDEA CHECK FOR If you’d like to introduce some UNDERSTANDING semiotics to your students and Ask students what Patterson haven’t yet, you might have them means by “We’re all posers” parse the meaning of “a rear- (para. 9). What is his tone, and rangement of significations” in how is it amplified by coming at paragraph 9. You could tie this the end of a paragraph? Do idea to approaches to writing students agree with this claim? about the visual rhetoric of photos or paintings, which is a skill relevant to the AP® Language synthesis question.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 338 22/03/18 11:56 AM Hsu to the surfaces of history. There is the gamin the sleeves? It requires strict posture to wear CLOSE READING look of wearing the moto with a Breton-striped a jacket in this way, and a lenient mood not to

How to Listen Music One of the joys of Patterson’s shirt and ballet flats, like Audrey Hepburn on scorn the act as flagrant affectation. essay is his wordplay and his abil- a jaunt to Sturgis. Or — another of a thousand The brooding bad attitude of the moto is ity to turn a phrase within a disguises — the streamlined b-girl thing, meant to be worn lightly. Its aggression is a sentence. He often plays with with skinny black jeans and sparkling Adidas put-on easily shrugged off. The jacket tells you language or imagery within a Superstars, urban armor, completing the to embrace it as rock-idol clothing in a scheme sentence. For instance, in the last protective bubble of earbuds and sunglasses. where idolatry is of greater import than rock. It paragraph, he juxtaposes “put- What do we make of the recent development is a costume for the movie in which you imagine on” with “shrugged off” and “idol” of draping a motorcycle jacket over their yourself to star. with “idolatry.” You could point shoulders without deigning to fit the arms in [2015] out these two sentences to the students, and ask them to review the essay to collect other exam- EXPLORING THE TEXT ples. (Here’s another good one, from paragraph 8: “Its signal plays 1. Who do you think is the audience for this essay? 5. What is Patterson’s attitude toward the black on many frequencies, expanding Are they motorcycle jacket wearers? Explain why leather jacket? How does he use it to comment on or why not. popular culture? its meanings when garbled.”) Have students analyze how the 2. Identify the thesis of “How the Motorcycle 6. What does Patterson mean when he says that Jacket Lost Its Cool and Found It Again.” How Marlon Brando, in The Wild One, was “exaggerating wordplay enhances meaning. would you characterize the evidence Troy an old standard of male beauty to arrive at a new Patterson uses to support it? How effective is that ideal of neoclassical beefcake” (para. 5)? TRM SUGGESTED evidence? 7. How does Patterson support his claim that “the RESPONSES 3. Look carefully at the combination of sensory motorcycle jacket is an international uniform Suggested responses to the details and figurative imagery in paragraph 2. What impervious to obsolescence” (para. 7)? To what tone does this establish? What effect does this extent does the title of the essay undermine this questions for this reading can be tone have on Patterson’s credibility? claim? Do you agree? Explain your answer. found on the Teacher’s Resource 4. Describe Patterson’s experience of shopping for 8. Patterson says that Brando in his leather jacket Flash Drive. and trying on a leather motorcycle jacket. How became a meme: “a look swiftly mimicked, cloned, does he get in the mood? How does it make valorized, spoofed, appropriated by couturiers and him feel? How does he use figurative language silk-screened by Andy Warhol in a series of works and specific diction choices to characterize that must constitute its sanctification” (para. 6). What his experience? What appeals do these details does he mean by this? Why does he consider being make, and how do they serve Patterson’s overall silk-screened by Andy Warhol (see Myths, page 365) argument? an essential part of what makes that image a meme?

How to Listen to Music TEACHING IDEA To preview Hsu’s essay, you HUA HSU could ask students to write about Hua Hsu (b. 1977) is currently an associate professor of English and director of the American their music listening habits and Studies department at Vassar College and a board member of the Asian American Writers experiences. They could write Workshop. His work has appeared in Artforum, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Slate, and the about a favorite artist or genre; Wire. Hsu’s first book, A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific (2016), is about when, where, and how they a literary-critical examination of American perceptions of China between the two world wars. listen to music; about how they In the following article, originally published in the New Yorker in 2016, Hsu reviews a book by choose what to listen to and how they discover new music; about critic Ben Ratliff about the state of modern music. music they like less now than OTHER VOICES 339 they used to and why. Assign one topic, or let students choose. This activity could be a quick warm-up impromptu writing, or it could be a more considered exploratory draft. Students could then revisit their ideas after reading Hsu’s essay and see how their perspectives compare to his (and Ratliff’s).

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TRM KEY PASSAGE This page contains a rich passage suitable for close read- In paragraph 2, Hua Hsu asserts that we enjoy both art ing. For an annotation handout of and music by experiencing it this passage, see the Teacher’s as a “web of deeply personal Resource Flash Drive. associations: affinities and phobias, echoes across time and space that resolve only in the most idiosyncratic spaces of your mind.” How does this painting by artist Paul Klee, entitled Ancient Harmony, illustrate this claim? Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland/Bridgeman Images/© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Society 2018 Artists Rights (ARS), Images/© New Switzerland/Bridgeman Basel, Kunstmuseum, 340

BUILDING CONTEXT CHECK FOR You might need to point out the UNDERSTANDING juxtaposition and humorous Students might benefit from tension between the references talking about the meanings of the to Melville and Guns N’ Roses in phrase “find our bearings” (para. Hsu’s opening line. You could 2), since this question is central show them the “November Rain” to Hsu’s argument. Ask them to video (but probably not all nine define the implications of that minutes!). The juxtaposition in the phrase, in context. first sentence is echoed, too, in the paragraph’s last sentence.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 340 22/03/18 11:57 AM Hsu What Every Song Ever offers isn’t a set of to standard metrics of rhythm and tone struc- TEACHING IDEA critical edicts but the spectacle of an active mind ture. “The old way of ‘correct’ listening,” Ratliff processing a world in constant flux. The book explains, involved a kind of “preconditioning”: How to Listen Music To help students understand Hsu’s contrast between the old is loosely inspired by the idea, popularized by “A certain language of rhythms and harmo- way of listening to music and the Aaron Copland’s classic What to Listen for in nies, signposts and cues, became consensual contemporary way, have them Music, that music can be appreciated according within a culture.” But that past age of music examine paragraph 3, especially the two middle sentences seeing connections (“Listening to music … single piece of music”), and debate The painter Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) said, “An artist must paint, not what he sees in whether Hsu’s teenage experi- Nature, but what is there. To do so he must invent symbols, which, if properly used, make ence with “November Rain” his work seem even more real than what is in front of him. He does not try to by-pass exemplifies the old or the new Nature; his work is superior to Nature’s surface appearances, but not to its basic laws.” In way. Answers may vary, but the his work, Burchfield depicts sounds by using particular lines and shapes. Shown here is debates should send students his painting The Insect Chorus (1917). back to the text to clarify Hsu’s argument. How does Burchfield circumvent the “standard metrics” of visual art — what Hsu calls “preconditioning” when he talks about listening to music — in this work to communicate sound? How might Hsu connect the experience of viewing this painting with Ben Ratliff’s philosophy of how to listen to music?

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute / Art Resource, NY

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 341 22/03/18 11:57 AM 6 appreciation, besides being no fun, presumed as Lil Wayne “melt[s] the ends off his own words.” Popular Culture a kind of finitude — it presumed boundaries. According to Ratliff, such moves provoke “a seem- Listening to music, then, was a devotional, ingly impossible thought: that the artist doesn’t often self-contained act. At the very least, that even need an audience, or that he has been put in old idea assumed that we had the time or the front of it by random circumstances.” desire to immerse ourselves repeatedly, distrac- ◆ ◆ ◆ tion-free, in a single piece of music. This isn’t the world most of us inhabit anymore. For the The state of digital infinitude that we now largely 5 cost of a CD (or less), we have access to a near- take for granted has placed a special burden on endless supply of music, in a near-endless array music writing. It’s been a while since I read a piece of venues. Music appreciation in 2016 means of music criticism to learn if a new album or artist curating your drive to work or your walk to class, was good or not. It’s easy enough to drop the (now playing a song a hundred times without ever decidedly proverbial) needle and find out for myself. stopping to scrutinize the lyrics. I’m far more interested in reading about how a It’s quite possible that we have an even stron- critic hears: what they listen for, their desires and CHECK FOR ger attachment to music now that it is ubiquitous, idiosyncrasies, the world that comes into focus for UNDERSTANDING woven into every moment of our lives, than we did them when a record is playing. Some of Ratliff’s then. But the age of the infinite playlist has also most intriguing chapters muse on qualities that have Near the beginning of paragraph meant the proliferation of algorithms designed come to seem normal and desirable, but for reasons 4, Hsu makes an unsupported to give us exactly what makes us comfortable. that aren’t clear. For example: is there a purpose for claim about “the age of the infinite playlist” being something It’s a desire to resist these present-day forces of speed? Not in dance music, but as an approach to that Ratliff’s book counters. You preconditioning that animates Ratliff’s book. It performance — in the manic solo of “Salt Peanuts,” could ask students to evaluate is divided into twenty ways of processing a song, say, or the hard-core assault of D.R.I. For Ratliff, Hsu’s method here: Is the claim many of which — “loudness” and “density,” for speed is a display, a relationship. “It doesn’t inher- enough of a truism to leave unde- instance — are open and fairly intuitive. Songs ently increase or enhance the feeling of the notes veloped, or would the argument across time and space cluster around these head- themselves, or the listener’s physical pleasure,” but benefit from support? ings, leading Ratliff to insights about, for instance, it puts the listener in a place: “It represents a tacit the altered zones we encounter when we lose our- contract between the player and the listener: we’re selves in “repetitive” music, or the ways in which in this together, and it might come to no good.” “improvisation” tweaks our sense of the world as Another of his questions: what makes a song it is. There’s a chapter on “virtuosity” that ranges sad? Is it the “phantom quality” of knowing where from Sarah Vaughan and Art Tatum to YouTube the story of any song ends, after the session is over videos of kids shredding on electric guitars. and everyone goes home? There are blue notes, Another addresses really long songs — far longer of course, and there are the songs that become than “November Rain” — and how they scramble synonymous with the tragedy of their conception. our sense of what is comprehensible. “The point But is heavy metal sad? Maybe, as Ratliff beautifully is a larger array of music than the eye can see on argues, the brooding aggression of metal obscures a the shelf, than the ear can take in within one cycle deeper melancholy. “Punk is busking and journal- of memory,” Ratliff writes. “It doesn’t reduce to ism and dogma and accountability and unity and a song or an album. It’s a relationship.” One of the humanities. Metal is virtuosity and philosophy the book’s most absorbing sections considers and disposition and rumor and misanthropy and how performers use indifference, or a knowing science.” It’s these occasional glimpses into Ratliff’s suppression of their talents — that nudge-wink own idiosyncratic responses to music that are the that happens when, for example, a rapper such book’s best moments. A chapter on “slowness” 342

CLOSE READING CLOSE READING CLOSE READING You might ask students to exam- Students might discuss the The Ratliff quotation that ine paragraph 4 to describe Hsu’s purpose of (or evaluate the effec- contrasts punk and metal in para- purpose. Is he summarizing or tiveness of) the shift to the first graph 6 offers a moment to evaluating Ratliff’s book in this person at the beginning of para- discuss the rhetorical effect of paragraph? Students should graph 5. polysyndeton and antithesis. support their claim with evidence from the text.

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This painting, entitled Hot and How to Listen Music Cool Jazz, was completed in 2004 by contemporary artist Kaaria Mucherera. What message does this painting convey about the idea of musical temperature? Based on Hsu’s essay, what do you think Ratliff’s take on this would be?

KAARIA MUCHERERA (CONTEMPORARY ARTIST)/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images

begins with him messing around with a computer Song Ever a quaint curio of a bygone era. But this TEACHING IDEA program that enables users to slow songs down to seems to be Ratliff’s point. The book meanders In the last two paragraphs, Hsu an ominous ooze. The chapter ranges from the late and muses, providing plenty of space for readers presents some of his most direct DJ Screw, famed for remixing hip-hop and R. & B. to wonder about their own fixations, to remain evaluative comments about tracks to a death-defying crawl, to the sludgy “stoner ambivalent about questions of genre or history Ratliff’s book. To explore these in doom” band Sleep. “Slowness in music invites rec- and abide by their own deeply personal and far depth, you could have students iprocity: it makes the listener want to fill the spaces superior classification systems instead. It’s best to reread those paragraphs and with his own content, whether that be associations think of Every Song Ever as a series of moods and circle or highlight any word or or movement or emotional response.” provocations rather than a book to be read straight phrase that expresses an assess- This insight may help to explain how the book through. Each of the chapters seems to dissolve, to ment of Ratliff’s work. Then, ask itself works. “Sounds are running ahead of our fade out, ending, every time, with a playlist, a fitting students to define the extent to vocabularies for describing them,” Ratliff argues, way to process the vertigo prompted by abundance. which Hsu is recommending the and that sense of disorientation — “of not knowing Which is to say: you don’t have to process it all if book. Finally, does Hsu’s review what process makes what sounds” — has become you don’t want to. You can just chase whatever you make them interested in reading an inherent part of listening to pop music. Maybe, like, until you feel like chasing something else. Ratliff’s book? Why or why not? in a few years, we will learn better strategies for [2016] apprehending all of it at once, making Every CLOSE READING You might ask students to examine the last two lines of the essay EXPLORING THE TEXT and explain how they make a claim about both reading Ratliff’s 1. How would you describe Hua Hsu’s opening 2. What is Hsu’s attitude toward Ratliff’s book? How book and listening to music, strategy in the first two paragraphs? How does he make the review of another writer’s book a effective are these paragraphs in capturing his statement of his own views about how to listen to using evidence from the rest of audience’s attention and establishing Hsu’s music? the essay as support. authority as a reviewer of Ben Ratliff’s book Every 3. At the end of paragraph 2 Hsu poses a question: Song Ever? “[H]ow do we find our bearings at a time when TRM SUGGESTED OTHER VOICES 343 RESPONSES Suggested responses to the questions for this reading can be found on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

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Popular Culture he answer the question? How would you answer audience? How are those reflected in the examples the question? he gives as evidence, and how does Hsu use 4. What do you think Hsu means by “digital them to develop his argument? If possible, listen infinitude” (para. 5)? What consequences does he to some of the music he mentions. In light of believe that infinitude has? your listening experience, how effective are his examples in supporting the claims he makes about 5. What is the insight that Hsu argues “may help how to listen to music? to explain how [Ratliff’s] book itself works” (para. 7)? 9. Pick one of the artists Hsu mentions — maybe one 6. Hsu’s review contains several short quotations from you don’t know — and try reviewing his or her music Ratliff’s book. How does he use these quotations in the way Hsu suggests: describe what you listened to develop his argument? How effectively do these for, how the work appealed to your desires and quotations support Hsu’s central claim? idiosyncrasies, and the world that came into focus 7. Hsu divides his short review into two discrete for you as you listened. Do you agree that this is the sections. What is the relationship between these best way to listen to music? Explain why or why not. sections? How do they function together to support Hsu’s primary claim?

TRM VOCABULARY Have Superheroes Killed the Movie Star? A vocabulary exercise based on challenging words from this read- ANGELICA JADE BASTIÉN ing can be found on the Teacher’s Angelica Jade Bastién (b. 1989) is an American essayist, critic, and fiction writer based in Resource Flash Drive. Chicago. She is a contributing writer for Vulture, and her work has also appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, New York magazine, Rolling Stone, Thrillist, and the Village TB MULTIPLE Voice. The following essay on the superhero film genre was originally published in a 2015 CHOICE issue of the Village Voice. For an AP®-style multiple-choice question set on a passage from ooking back at this dismal summer of biggest hit ever, thanks to the current dominance this reading, see The Language of Lsuperhero adaptations, I am reminded of onscreen superheroes. Composition, Third Edition Test of something Chris Rock said during the 77th Just take a look at the careers of actors like Bank, which is both available in Academy Awards: “There are only four real stars, the various Marvel Chrises (they’re interchange- ExamView format and integrated and the rest are just popular people.” This was able enough so choosing any will do). Each has into the e-book. February 2005, mind you — a few months before achieved some level of popularity and even a Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins would hit somewhat dedicated fandom. But they have also BUILDING CONTEXT theaters and three years before Marvel would been unable to translate the visibility their char- Before beginning this essay, you kick-start its cinematic universe with Iron Man. acters bring them into success elsewhere. might ask students to brainstorm Stardom was already changing pretty dra- Watching one superhero film after another, a list of movie stars — for the matically thanks to reality television. But Rock’s it becomes undeniable that the actors aren’t the purposes of this activity, you somewhat exaggerated statement is truer now stars — the characters and property are. Most might define a star as someone than ever before. Yes, social media, YouTube ticket-buyers don’t go to Deadpool because who would draw you to a movie vloggers, and reality TV have greatly altered who they’re enamored of Ryan Reynolds’s charm or regardless of the movie’s plot. becomes a star and what it even means to be one. see Suicide Squad because of Margot Robbie’s Conversely, you could ask them But movie stardom — once an integral part of the skills. Perhaps that’s why it’s disorienting to see about superhero movies. Do any Hollywood ecosystem — has arguably taken its traditional, undeniable stars like Will Smith favorites emerge? Do they care about the actors who play the 344 heroes? Or, you might ask them to talk about the essay’s title and speculate about the claim it makes. CLOSE READING Students could examine the opening section to analyze how Bastién sets up her argument and engages her readers. How does she establish ethos in the opening section? What techniques does she use, and what is her tone? What is her thesis?

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In paragraph 4, Angelica Jade Bastién says, “Watching one superhero film after another, it becomes undeniable that the actors aren’t the stars — the characters and property are. Pictured above are Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck, each playing Batman in a different reboot of the film. Have Superheroes Killed the Movie Star? To what extent do these images support — or challenge — Bastién’s assertion?

Photofest

Photofest Photofest

and Ben Affleck play characters like Deadshot If anything, Hollywood needs a new crop and to and Batman. Stars of their caliber alter the films expand on what stardom means in the first place. they’re in by their mere presence, as if they have a gravitational pull. And there are moments in What Is a Star? TEACHING IDEA their respective turgid superhero epics where Bankability is often the easiest answer to the Since the section “What Is a their levity suggests much better films than the question of what makes a movie star. But Star?” works through definitions, ones we get. box-office results aren’t everything. Hollywood you could ask students to pay WWithith true movie stars, we bring baggage to 5 history is littered with actors whose films made attention to the rhetorical func- every performance we watch — the emotions we bank but have little lasting cultural impact. Chris tions of those definitions. Ask attach to their early performances, their triumphs Pratt — now trading in the rugged American students to identify each defini- and their downfalls. machismo that drew us to Harrison Ford — has tion in the section (of “true star,” But superheroes and nostalgia-tinged reboots found success leading Jurassic World and for instance), then to examine have replaced the alluring mythology of movie stars Guardians of the Galaxy. But it’s hard to argue that how Bastién constructs her defi- themselves. That isn’t because we don’t need stars. he is successful on his own and not just replicating nition (through examples? by listing characteristics? through OTHER VOICES 345 negation?). Finally, have students discuss the necessity of the definitions in Bastién’s argument and the usefulness of definitions as a rhetorical strategy in their own CHECK FOR writing. UNDERSTANDING Since “turgid” and “levity” might challenge some students’ vocabulary, you might ask students to paraphrase the last sentence of paragraph 4 and describe Bastién’s tone.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 345 22/03/18 11:57 AM 6 a bland approximation of actors before him. Is he but still gets little to do. The stalwart all-American Popular Culture truly bankable, or is he just choosing the proper- hero who is proud and true. If even stars as big as ties that guarantee some level of financial success? Will Smith now rarely bring the kind of box-office Pratt is a good model of someone who is popular results that justify their huge paydays, do the stu- but has yet to become a true star, the kind who is dios really even need them? From the perspective either bankable in original films or in possession of the executives, what is the point of a movie star of a star image that alters the film around him. beyond marketability? So, what makes a movie star beyond box- office appeal? Looking at the careers of everyone Why Stars Matter from Bette Davis to Michelle Pfeiffer to Angelina The studio system during Hollywood’s golden Jolie, you can get a sense of the alchemy involved. age had one surefire commodity: the stars them- A true star, in essence, is a potent mix of sex selves. Whole genres were born out of the neces- appeal, mystery, and relatability all spiced with sity to market these figures. Stars were under the ability to surprise and a certain something contract with the studios who groomed them, extra that no one else has. This adds up to an changed their names, created stories around identity that audiences come to recognize and them, and thrust them in front of the camera seek out time and again. until they found a formula that they could pack- When we go to a Brad Pitt film, we know age over and over again. we’re getting a character actor in a leading man’s That may make movie stars seem, to today’s body often wrestling with what his beauty means. audiences, unimportant. Many of the most popular When we see a Keanu Reeves film, we know stars from decades ago are unrecognizable to we’re getting an actor who asks us what it means audiences today for a variety of reasons, including for a man to be heroic in the first place, one who changing tastes. But when we look back on the makes vulnerability central to his performance stars with true legacies — the Cary Grants, the Paul and who often interacts with the camera in ways Newmans, the Marilyn Monroes — it’s clear they that we expect of female sex symbols. Of course, weren’t ever just products of Hollywood’s star sys- there’s always a level of trial and error with this. tem like their peers in the first place. They often had Even after figuring out who they are on-screen, a clear hand in shaping their images, with actors the best stars often subvert, fight against, or such as Bette Davis notoriously reworking scripts, deconstruct their own image. giving advice on direction, and making choices that TEACHING IDEA Having this sort of crafted narrative is import- 10 directly affected the production of their films, even ant; without it stars don’t exist. That’s the danger to the chagrin of directors and producers. In paragraph 10, Bastién devel- of new, hot actors joining comic franchises that The great stars challenged the studios and ops her argument through a lock them into absurd seven-picture deals: They America itself. Marlon Brando, Montgomery series of short declarations. To don’t have the ability or time to craft their own Clift, and River Phoenix helped us question help students understand her star image. The superhero characters they take on what it means to be a man in this country. The logic, you could have them exam- subsume their image. The moviegoing public has stardom of Sidney Poitier gave white audiences ine the connections between a hard time seeing these actors beyond the comic a peek into the black experience and perhaps each statement in sequence. book and legacy franchise characters they play. the ability to see the humanity of African- Many are cause-and-effect relationships, and students could use These performers get stuck playing characters that Americans. The activism of Harry Belafonte sentence-combining skills to all seem crafted from similar molds: the emotion- and Angelina Jolie brings attention to causes connect them (for instance, ally bruised white dude full of snappy comebacks. that many would like to forget. Stars can start “Because the superhero charac- Or the badass, leather-clad heroine who has more trends in fashion, affect political conversations, ters they take on subsume their of an interesting moral landscape than her peers and leave an important footprint on American image, the moviegoing public has 346 a hard time seeing these actors beyond the comic book and legacy franchise characters they play”). Students may choose to combine different sentences, BUILDING CONTEXT TEACHING IDEA which can lead to a discussion The “Why Stars Matter” section In paragraph 12, Bastién lists some roles as culture-shapers? This about the logic of the passage refers to many old movie stars. of the effects that movie stars have discussion is tangential to (and about syntax). Afterward, You could have students had on culture. Students could Bastién’s argument, but you could have students discuss the effec- construct quick footnotes for explore why they have had influen- use it to suggest how one claim tiveness of the original syntax. each of them, with citations tial roles: What does it say about can lead to other questions (see (although you might need to culture that actors and actresses also the Conversation, which forbid them from copying a have had such influence? What begins on p. 369). Wikipedia or an IMDb entry). ethos do the stars have in their

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 346 22/03/18 11:57 AM Bastién culture. But most powerful is how they affect the that Hollywood can’t get enough of despite audi- TRM KEY PASSAGE medium itself. ences’ difficulty in differentiating them. Critics’ conception of cinema’s “canon” Actors like Chris Hemsworth may never This page contains a rich passage suitable for close read- perhaps bends far too much toward directors. figure out what brand of stardom suits them, Have Superheroes Killed the Movie Star? ing. For an annotation handout of Great stars are often responsible for some of the but their careers will be just fine. Although, this passage, see the Teacher’s more unforgettable images in film. And stars can with his turn in Ghostbusters and the more Resource Flash Drive. be auteurs in their own right — playing with their comic approach to Thor in the DVD-extra short images from film to film, always in conversation film packaged with Captain America: Civil War, with the expectations of their audience. The rise of Hemsworth seems to be realizing what kind superhero films has taken some great actors off the of star he truly is: someone a bit funnier and table for years, skewing their ability to craft any sort more subversive than the straight-up heart- of image outside the familiar heroes that they play. throbs his physicality may lead us to expect of him. When it comes to the frustrating lack What Has Been Lost of mid-budget pictures — where true stardom The rise of comic book movies is an integral 15 finds its beginnings — the actors I’m worried part of the disappearance of an important kind about are the ones rarely given a chance to play of film: the mid-budget adult drama, where superhero characters in the first place. actresses like Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer, The ecstatic reaction to the casting of CHECK FOR and Meryl Streep cut their teeth. Going farther Marvel’s upcoming Black Panther, a film with UNDERSTANDING back, I can’t help but think of the women’s nary a light-skinned or white actor in sight, You might ask students to explain picture — a strange, somewhat feminist subgenre isn’t just because of the character’s history or Bastién’s claim about Michael B. during the era of classic Hollywood that existed the rarity of seeing black people headlining Jordan and Lupita Nyong’o in because the studio heads needed vehicles for a major film where slavery isn’t the thrust of paragraph 18, and its function in their actresses. An actress can’t become a star the narrative. It’s also a reaction to the dearth her argument. if she has no meaty leading roles, a truth that of black actors (especially dark-skinned black Hollywood seems to have forgotten. Mid-budget women) who become movie stars in the first TEACHING IDEA studio films are often where stars have been able place. And it’s indicative of what a movie star to craft themselves. It’s also where we most often can do for the culture and film itself. It’s actors Beginning in the middle of para- see the consistent star and director collabora- like Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong’o who graph 18, with “But with no …,” tions. But now directors seem to jump directly offer the most interesting opportunities for Bastién returns to some of her from small independent films to gargantuan the evolution of movie stardom. But with no previous arguments. Students could explore the structure and would-be blockbusters, and with so much money mid-budget pictures to give them the chance coherence of the essay by explic- on the line, there’s no room for experimentation to create their own legacies — rather than itly connecting the rhetorical or for directors to push themselves and their adapt those of characters that have existed in questions and statements in actors in bold directions. comics for decades — will we see them get that paragraphs 18 and 19 to earlier Ultimately, I’m not worried about the white opportunity? Will we see them collaborate with sections of the essay. Then, they male actors — like the Marvel Chrises — when it a writer/director over decades in a way that could debate the effectiveness of comes to the changing and charged landscape is both risky and rewarding? Will they be able Bastién’s strategy: To what extent of modern Hollywood. They will get chance after to develop the intimacy with their audience is she summarizing or repeating chance to prove their worth as stars even if they that a great star turn can achieve if they’re previous claims, and to what can barely inhabit the superhero roles they play, stuck vacillating between big-budget films extent is she extending or devel- let alone figure out and craft their own public that offer little to no narrative risks, very small oping them? Analyze the images. Just ask Jai Courtney. Or any of the inter- independent films (if they’re lucky), television, effectiveness of the essay’s changeable white, blond-ish, sharp-jawed men and the stage? conclusion.

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CHECK FOR CLOSE READING UNDERSTANDING After referring to Bullock, Pfeiffer, exemplification, you could ask Students will need to understand and Streep in paragraph 15, them where in the paragraph the definition of a “mid-budget Bastién chooses not to include Bastién might have included such adult drama” (para. 15) to follow names of younger contemporary examples, and then whether the argument in the essay’s last actresses who would benefit additional examples would section. from mid-budget films. To bolster her argument significantly. help students think about

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How does this cartoon’s message relate to Bastién’s central argument in the final section of her essay? Tom Toro/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank Cartoon Collection/The Yorker New Toro/The Tom

To say that who becomes a star doesn’t elegance of Fred Astaire or the bristling heat of TEACHING IDEA matter is to forget that Hollywood is a microcosm Gene Kelly? Movie stars can make good films Ask students to consider of America itself, and to forget how stardom masterpieces, electrically charge a close-up, Bastién’s essay as an editorial or has shaped the history of the medium. What is and alter our understanding of a film due to a call-to-action, and then to iden- Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest work without the their image. They are often the reason certain tify what specific changes she way Cary Grant riffs on his own image in North genres like the women’s picture exists in the first would like to see in the film indus- by Northwest and Notorious? What is the arc of place. Film needs its movie stars. And television try, and what effects those the antihero in cinema without Vivien Leigh’s shouldn’t be the only place they’re allowed to changes would have. Instruct infuriating yet enchanting Scarlett O’Hara or breathe. Until Hollywood remembers this, the students to support their claims the way Bette Davis wrestled with female anger? medium itself will continue to suffer. with textual evidence. Then, ask What is the history of the musical without the [2016] them to define other purposes of the essay, in addition to a call-to- action. EXPLORING THE TEXT TRM SUGGESTED RESPONSES 1. Why do you believe Angelica Jade Bastién chose 3. What purpose do the “various Marvel Chrises” to quote comedian Chris Rock in the opening of (para. 3) serve? How effectively does Bastién use Suggested responses to the her essay? Do you agree with Rock’s observation them to develop her argument? questions for this reading can be that there are “only four real stars, and the rest are 4. Why does Bastién consider movie stardom to found on the Teacher’s Resource just popular people” (para. 1)? have been an “integral part of the Hollywood Flash Drive. 2. What are some of the consequences Bastién ecosystem” (para. 2)? How does she define true predicts as a result of the dearth of true movie stars? movie stars? What does she think has taken How effectively does she support these claims? their place?

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6. How does Bastién use questions throughout the Get Off the Treadmill essay? Trace several of her questions and analyze effect relationships. how they strengthen (or weaken) her argument. 9. Overall, how would you characterize Bastién’s 7. Bastién divides her essay into three sections: “What tone in this essay? Consider the role of Is a Star?,” “Why Stars Matter,” and “What Has humor in your response — is she sardonic, Been Lost.” What progression do you see in these buoyant, bitter, playful, something else, or a sections? How do they relate to one another? combination? TRM VOCABULARY A vocabulary exercise based on challenging words from this reading can be found on the Teacher’s Get Off the Treadmill Resource Flash Drive. The Art of Living Well in the Age of Plenty TB MULTIPLE MARK GREIF CHOICE Mark Greif (b. 1975) is an author, educator, and cultural critic in New York City. An associate For an AP®-style multiple-choice professor of liberal studies at the New School for Social Research and a professor of literary question set on a passage from studies at the New School in New York, he co-founded and is a frequent contributor to n+1, this reading, see The Language of a journal of literature, criticism, and politics. In 2016, he published a collection of essays Composition, Third Edition Test , entitled Against Everything which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Bank, which is both available in in Criticism. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Harper’s, ExamView format and integrated the London Review of Books, and the Guardian. The following essay was published by the into the e-book. Guardian in 2016. TEACHING IDEA o you ever learn about health from the multi-award-winning anti-stress drink.” Surely For a Grammar as Rhetoric and Dmedia? I do. Here are some things I’ve seen caring about the best, most award-winning sup- Style workshop on Short Simple recently. “How to engineer maximum delicious- plement beverage is a cause of stress? Sentences and Fragments featur- ness, pack in nutrients, increase sustainability, Even the bag my fast-food hamburger arrives ing this reading, see Appendix A, and build crazy food mashups.” But this is rather in won’t shut up. It’s covered with testimony to the p. 1145. distant from my goal of eating when hungry. franchise-corporation’s caring, its love of me, its “More than 90% of us don’t get enough potas- love of soil, tomatoes, our planet, friendship, farm- BUILDING CONTEXT sium.” But enough potassium for what? “Great ers, heritage, my arteries and babies. Yet I can’t Although he does not use the Sleep Tonight: Pro Secrets, Revealed.” I had not even imagine who is caring — what human heart phrase directly, Greif focuses on known anyone slept professionally. beats inside this paper trash. I think I am supposed what might be called “first-world to care about these things, and so the salesmen ◆ ◆ ◆ problems” (in para. 16, he refers to parrot what they suppose would be my aspirations. “first-world professionals”). You One would be more likely to blink at these fol- Has any free people ever been so shouted at by might prompt students to consider lies if we were not so surrounded by nonstop caring fools and salesmen? Under the guise of use- issues of privilege and class by fatuities in the imperative voice of advertising. ful knowledge, forces that frankly mean us no good, asking them to define the phrase “Tastes so pure you’ll love it.” Does anyone know which range in mood between hysterical enthusi- “first-world problems” — both its what purity tastes like? “Discover how good your asm, indifference and careless exploitation, warn denotation and connotation — and body was designed to feel.” But who designed us with “health” advice that is variously incoherent, list examples that might be part of my body? “Stress less with the bestselling, short-sighted (to be reversed or falsified five years their own lives.

OTHER VOICES 349 TEACHING IDEA Since Greif has already done some language analysis in his first two paragraphs, you could flip the script and ask students to CLOSE READING look at the quoted lines and analyze the appeals that the copy You might want to ask students to students to identify his purpose writers (attempted to) use. How analyze the effectiveness of the for this introductory method. A do the “salesmen parrot what opening of the essay. Greif leads similar, or additional, approach they suppose would be [our] with a question about health and would be to ask them to define aspirations” (para. 3)? Many of the media, and follows with what Greif has “learn[ed] about the lines appeal to pathos, but comments on the language or health from the media,” according you might encourage students to logic of the advertising sentences to the first five paragraphs. identify and explain more than in the first four paragraphs. Ask one appeal for each one. You could divide the quotations among groups. Afterward, ask them if they think Greif’s critiques are well-founded.

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You could say that this advice all comes in 5 more slow-growing diseases. For many, simply to bad faith. But the voices which approach us in be born in a rich nation is to have won the lottery TEACHING IDEA good faith may be even more to blame. for inexpensive access to the necessities of life; to Health, exercise, food, sex have become cen- be gloriously, unprecedentedly free from cares Paragraph 6 can be seen as the tral preoccupations of our time. We preserve the historically and in comparison to much of the thesis statement for the essay living corpse in an optimal state, not so we may globe. There is freedom to enjoy — and there are (you could include para. 7 too, for do something with it, but for the feeling of opti- wealth and material freedom to spread to others. added complexity). You might ask students to try to turn the para- misation. More and more of life gets turned over For progressive civilisation had always expected graph into a single sentence to life maintenance at the very moment you’d that meeting necessity in the west was a mere thesis statement, and then ask think we’d be free to pursue something else. prerequisite to further, higher goals: justice, them to compare the merits of I find it hard not to want to live longer. I also equality, democracy, and the extension of ease of their version to Greif’s paragraph want to live without pain. This means I want access to the necessities of life to all. version. This activity could health. But when I place myself at a point within But we have taken an unexpected detour on 10 prompt a discussion about differ- the vast constellation of health knowledge and the way to meeting those higher goals. Once prog- ent structures of thesis state- health behaviours, I can’t help but detect some ress had made it easy to acquire the necessities ments, both in professional misunderstanding. The systems of health have of life, other forces set about making those needs essays and in student writing. little to do with my simple ambitions. There is mentally complicated and hard. Into this cate- something too much, or too many, in them; too gory goes much of what passes for wisdom about arbitrary, or too controlling; too doom-laden, health, exercise, food, and sex. Inexpensive things too managerial, too messianic. have become expensive, trivial matters require We should spare a thought for the fate of what obsessive thought, universal biology is mazed with used to be called the “necessities of life.” Necessity fashion and status-seeking, and free possessions dictates what must be done for the body before are commoditised. If I feel sure of one thing, it is CLOSE READING anything can be done for the mind. For millennia, that this kind of “health” imperative is not moral. Students could examine the people have known what the necessities of life are. It is grooming — what monkeys do in picking nits claim in the second sentence of Food, shelter and clothes, made or won by labour. out of their fur. We may find that grooming sits paragraph 8 by challenging or Sex and reproduction, tied to the labour of child- among the subordinate necessities of life. But qualifying that definition. Then, birth and work of child rearing. Sleep. (Alexander surely the ceaseless grooming and optimisation of ask them if they would add to or the Great said that sleep and sexual intercourse, everyday life stands in the way of finding out how omit anything from the list in the more than anything else, reminded him that he else we could spend our attention and our energy. rest of the paragraph. You could was mortal). Movement, as has only come into A decade ago I wrote an essay titled “Against also have them describe the focus since we began to sit for so much of our Exercise.” It came about from a trip to the gym syntax and analyze its days. Touch, perhaps, as has become more obvi- to run on a treadmill. I was standing in the usual effectiveness. ous as the world became less tactile and rough, stance of mutual disregard, pretending not to more screened and smoothed. Excretion. notice my neighbours sweating through skintight But 3,000 years of civilisation have worked pyjamas and making their angry — or, I suppose, to make these necessities easy to come by. In the fierce — faces. I tried not to look up when some- last three centuries, human progress has pacified one grunted or shouted, and kept my eyes politely necessity in the rich countries. Back-breaking on the calories ticking by on my readout, just as in labour has been reduced. Food is inexpensive and a lift I’d keep my eyes on the floor numbers. 350

TEACHING IDEA CHECK FOR CLOSE READING The last two sentences of para- UNDERSTANDING The transition between paragraph 9 are a good place to To help clarify Greif’s main argu- graphs 10 and 11 may seem pause for discussion with ment, you can ask students to abrupt. Students could explain students. How would they char- define the reference to “groom- the connection between the two acterize the ideas they present? ing” in paragraph 10 and explain paragraphs. You might ask them You might then ask students to its connection to morality. Note to write a transition phrase or defend, challenge, or qualify that this word returns in the sentence to insert between the Greif’s claim about the goals of a essay’s final phrase. paragraphs, and then to explain “progressive civilization.” the merits of Greif’s method.

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These graphs show data from the American Psychological Association’s 2013 Stress in America survey. Get Off the Treadmill What does this information suggest about American culture? How does it relate to Mark Greif’s assertion that health and exercise “have become central preoccupations of our time” (para. 6)?

Americans’ Views on Exercise

Percentage of Each Generation Percentage of Each Generation That Views Physical Activity as That Rates Itself as Doing an Extremely or Very Important Excellent or Very Good Job at Physical Activity 53% 53% 48% 46% Millennials Generation X 29% 30% Baby Boomers 26% 25% Silent Generation

Data from the American Psychological Association Stress in America™ survey (2013).

But then I breached convention and looked are explicit rationales, and the precise words and TEACHING IDEA around, and was struck down by the sort of vision phrases which recur in official injunctions to that must have come to William Blake,1 a glance exercise. Then there are the quiet things people Greif’s reference to “an intelligible into heaven and hell, suddenly manifest in his say in passing, about the pleasures and the ghastli- argument” in paragraph 13 opens ® garden in Felpham. There was a young man nesses of it all. Modern exercise has a background the door to some relevant AP crucified on a lat pull-down. There was a young in sport, even in the ancient gymnasia — but it is Language discussion. Students woman whose legs were madly turned by a really quite different. It certainly seemed striking can contrast his comments in paragraph 12 with his research in spinning bike. No one looked happy: they either that, as advanced societies have done away with paragraph 13 to define the differ- looked like executioners, grim as death, or vic- much industrial labour, and have automobilised ence between an “unintelligible” tims. Certainly no one looked sociable — though transport, the new immaterial labourer spends and an “intelligible” argument this might be the space with the most people, his leisure mimicking the old repetitive gestures of according to Greif. They could together, supposedly at ease and enjoying leisure the die press, or a stevedore’s lifting of cargo, or a also discuss the role different time, that they would enter all day. I turned from rural traveller’s walk to a distant town, but turned appeals make, or the contrasting one unseeing face to the next, each chasing some into spectacle, sped-up, numbered, and producing sources of evidence, in relation to number, and I said: “You are condemned. You muscles that serve no practical use but more of the overall argument Greif makes. are condemned. You are condemned.” I, too, was the same mimicry. And that this is so often experi- condemned. I got down from the treadmill. enced as obligation, rather than play. Then, I began CHECK FOR to read and write about diet and food. Certainly This, of course, had nothing to do with an UNDERSTANDING intelligible argument. So when I got home, I began we are in a golden intellectual age of political cri- to try to figure out why we go to the gym. There tiques of industrial food production. The pollution Since Greif lists many points in and cruelty of factory farms have come into public paragraph 13, it could be produc- 1 An English Romantic poet who wrote primarily during the late tive to ask students to summarize view. The dangers of pesticides and groundwater eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. —Eds. his position in that paragraph.

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CHECK FOR BUILDING CONTEXT UNDERSTANDING You could show students some Given the context in paragraph images from Blake’s The Marriage 11, you might confirm that of Heaven and Hell, or you could students recognize that “lift” is ask them what is hellish about the the common British word for an sight of people working out in the elevator (and not, in the gym, a gym. reference to weights).

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In what ways does this cartoon connect to Greif’s characterization of exercise in the twenty-first century? Charlie Hankin/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank Cartoon Collection/The Yorker New Hankin/The Charlie

contamination lie behind the progress of organic lemongrass? We add the value of our intellec- farming. But alongside the public-spirited motives tual labour, our “finishing” of the world’s raw for a return to heirloom products, artisanal pro- materials. duction, and farm-to-table eating, there seems to The foodie wades out and swims in possibility. be another push towards rarity, social distinction And then, surprisingly, many a foodie will delib- and hostility to the cheap mass provision of food as erately restrict his range. He sets rules or laws for a fundamental civilised achievement. himself that make the quest for food harder and Most ambiguous, to me, is the new figure of the thinking more complex. Undiscovered foods the foodie. Only in a culture cut off from agri- only; “authentic” restaurants only, or kitsch din- culture and need can food become a hobby and ers or barbecue joints; organic food only; local or grounds for individual identity. The old gourmet farmers’ market food, raw food or slow food only. was a bit of a snob: he wed himself to France or Foodieism is a natural hobby for first-world pro- Italy, learned to cook a single cuisine and became fessionals, ostensibly showing an interest in the obsessed with importing, usually wine and cheese. world, but referring back to domination and the The foodie differs in having the whole globe 15 perfection of the enriched, physical self. at his fingertips. His cookbooks gravitate first to ◆ ◆ ◆ Europe (Provence; southern Italy), then quickly carry him to Turkey, Morocco, Vietnam, India. Having our food supply made simple, we devote No single tradition exists for him to learn, no ourselves to looking for ways to make it difficult. singular importers to patronise. Rather, an ocean Another route is through dieting, ostensibly for of ingredients washes up on his shores. There is health. Here, though, the weight-loss imperative, no food we can’t access. There is no traditional with its shadows of attractiveness and social dis- food, moreover, that can’t be further enchanted tinction, and other fantasies of rarity, difficulty by our concentration, restriction, choice, and and expense, complicate the fairly mundane discrimination between better and worse spec- research consensus on improving health: eat imens. Would you like some chipotle with your moderately, move more. You can avoid bread, 352

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING You might ask students to paraphrase the last sentence of paragraph 15 to be sure they understand Greif’s claim. You can also have them do the same thing with the last sentence of paragraph 16.

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polish off your bacon, steak and cheese, nothing — particularly since the 1960s. Major achieve- Get Off the Treadmill Students may need some has falsified the old research that correlates ani- ments have included the end of shame and prompting to take notice of how mal fats with plaque-filled arteries, heart disease, illegality in sex outside of marriage, the feminist Greif connects topics in the stroke, and cancers. reorganisation of intercourse around the female middle of his essay by tracing the You can rediscover your inner ape and revert to orgasm as well as the male; the destigmatisation sequence of his interests (“Then a “Paleolithic diet” with evolutionary justifications. of homosexuality, and a new fluidity to the norms sex and sexuality began to inter- But no 21st-century butcher can provide you the of gender identity. The underlying impetus in all est me” [para. 19]). Ask students animals eaten by our Paleolithic ancestors. You these reforms was to remove social penalties for to analyze how that method will not eat it in the conditions of scarcity of our doing what people were doing anyway. contributes to (or detracts from) Paleolithic ancestors. None of the rest of your life, But competing with true liberation has been 20 his ethos. upbringing, habits or ingested substances resem- sexual liberalisation — an effort to tell you that only ble those of our Paleolithic ancestors. You might expertise, exposure, advice and apparatus can let TEACHING IDEA equally ground your fantasies of historical destiny you enjoy, in the right way, what was already freely Greif includes several discrete in the fact that the entire history of human cul- possessed by you. A true test of liberation, as dis- focuses in his argument: the gym ture and civilisation has occurred in the Neolithic tinct from liberalisation, is whether you have also (paras. 11–13), foodies (paras. era — i.e., facilitated by the planting of grain and been freed to be free from sex. To ignore it, or to be 14–16), dieters (paras. 17–18), domestication of animals. Star Trek fans would asexual, without consequent social opprobrium and sex (paras. 19–20). You could seem to have a better grasp of the scientific method. or imputation of deficiency. We ought to see social assign each one to a group of students and ask them to summarize Greif’s position in one How does this cartoon relate to Greif’s claim that “we substitute or two sentences of their own. life-preservation for living” (para. 22)? In what ways do the cartoonist Then, you could jigsaw the and Greif each use humor to make their points? groups, have them share their findings, and then in the new group come up with a statement that synthesizes all four strands of his argument.

Joe Dator/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 353 22/03/18 11:58 AM 6 TRM categories of asexuals, who are free to have no sex grains and laborious artisanal manufacture. We KEY PASSAGE Popular Culture just as others are free to have endless spectacular refuse to recognise that an 80-year lifespan of This page contains a rich sex, and not feel towards them either suspicion or activities and projects is functional immortality for passage suitable for close read- pity. One of the cruel betrayals of sexual liberation the human animal. Or that dying is necessary, just ing. For an annotation handout of is the illusion that a person can be free only if he to let new people come on to the earth. So we sub- this passage, see the Teacher’s holds sex as all-important and exposes it endlessly stitute life-preservation for living, spending invalu- Resource Flash Drive. to others — providing it, proving it, enjoying it. able portions of youth and middle age on trying to I think sometimes of a John Prine song: “We increase our odds for an extra one, two or five years are living in the future, I’ll tell you how I know / I at the very end. read it in the paper, 15 years ago.” We often speak Frankly, I suspect that an ethics of living in a about a coming age. In that near future, we’ll rich nation at the dawn of the 21st century involves enjoy heavenly ease and wellbeing, safety and not caring so much about your health, your diet, leisure. How wonderful it will be! In fact, I think your exercise and your thrills. The meaningful we ought to admit that many of us in the rich time is now. We should be prepared to enjoy our nations are already living in that future, and have good luck, and drop dead after a sufficient length been for some decades. of time — but ask, along the way, what we actually But our surprising response to our times has wish to do with our time. A culture of health and TEACHING IDEA been the creation of new forms of pseudonecessity. futurity, right now, represents a terrified or intim- In some ways, paragraph 22 We go to the gym to strain at imitations of hard idated flight from moral freedom — covering our presents summary positions to labour, lifting nonexistent roofbeams, hoeing non- eyes from the fact that we have no further urgent the individual topics Greif existent fields. We pretend that our food — now tasks of bodily improvement, and really need to covered previously. You could safe, plentiful, cheap, delicious — matters so much choose between setting new social goals, or just ask students to extract sentences to our bodies that we must perfect it, elaborating a grooming ourselves into eternity. from this paragraph and affix new necessity of pollution and taboo for heritage [2016] them as conclusions to his previous arguments (in other words, EXPLORING THE TEXT take the sentence about the gym from para. 22 and place it at the 1. How does the series of questions in the social distinction and hostility to the cheap mass end of para. 13), and then ask essay’s first two paragraphs introduce Mark provision of food as a fundamental civilised students to argue what would be Greif’s argument? Are these questions meant achievement” (para. 13)? To what extent do you lost or gained by that organiza- to be answered? What other purpose might agree with his criticism? Explain your response. they serve? tional change. 6. Trace the quest of the “foodie,” as Greif describes 2. How does Greif establish his ethos? Identify it, in paragraphs 14–16. How does Greif use that at least two places in the essay that help him journey as evidence in his argument? TEACHING IDEA accomplish this. 7. Greif is particularly scathing in his debunking of The essay ends with a challenge, 3. What are some of the primary consequences of the so-called “Paleolithic diet.” How does he use and perhaps a call to action, for what Greif sees as our obsession with food and humor as part of his criticism? How effective is this the readers. Ask students to exercise? What are the secondary ones? How rhetorical strategy? Does he go too far? Explain summarize Greif’s position in the effectively does he support these claims? your answer, and be sure to consider the likely audience for Greif’s essay. final paragraph (you may want to 4. Why do you believe Greif mentions and refer them back to para. 10 to summarizes his earlier essay, “Against Exercise”? 8. How would you characterize the tone Greif adopts What realization did he come to about why and in “Get Off the Treadmill”? How does this tone understand the use of “groom- how we exercise? How does this realization relate relate to the purpose of his essay? How well suited ing”). As part of that task, have to the subject of this essay? is this tone for the subject matter? them define what Greif means by 5. What exactly is Greif criticizing when he says, 9. Do you think diet and exercise are aspects of “moral freedom” and “new social “there seems to be another push towards rarity, popular culture? Explain why or why not. goals.” Ask them to speculate on the type of social goals they 354 believe Greif would value, using evidence from the rest of the essay as support. Finally, students could respond by defending, challenging, or qualifying Greif’s position.

TRM SUGGESTED RESPONSES Suggested responses to the questions for this reading can be found on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

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JUSTIN PETERS The Ballad of Balloon Boy challenging words from this read- Justin Peters (b. 1981) is a correspondent for Slate magazine and former contributing editor ing can be found on the Teacher’s at the Columbia Journalism Review. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Resource Flash Drive. Monthly, and Travel + Leisure. Peters holds degrees from Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is author of The Idealist: Aaron TB MULTIPLE Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (2016). In the following article, originally CHOICE published on Slate in 2016, he critiques the penchant for theatricality in media journalism. For an AP®-style multiple-choice question set on a passage from t 2:42 p.m. on Oct. 15, 2009, CNN afternoon ◆ ◆ ◆ this reading, see The Language of A anchor Kyra Phillips interrupted a live Composition, Third Edition Test broadcast of a town hall by President Obama to But that summation sells Balloon Boy short. The Bank, which is both available in bring viewers a breaking story as alarming as Balloon Boy story crystallizes the problem of cable ExamView format and integrated it was irresistible. A large silver helium balloon news in one historically stupid moment. Balloon into the e-book. had broken loose and was racing through the Boy happened because CNN and its competitors windy skies of Colorado — with a small boy couldn’t help it from happening, because the pro- BUILDING CONTEXT trapped inside. By any journalistic criteria, a duction demands of a 24-hour news network left Videos of the news reports and little boy trapped inside a runaway experimental it vulnerable to the chicanery of an unscrupulous subsequent reports on the hoax balloon counts as a good story; by the reductive jerk. It deserves to be remembered as the moment are available on YouTube (search standards of cable news, which prize emotional when cable news emerged from its chrysalis and “balloon boy hoax”). You might simplicity and evocative imagery above all, the became the entity it was genetically destined to begin with one of the early live incident must have seemed like the greatest become: a fundamentally unjournalistic medium reports and ask students how story of all time. Cable-news scientists in a uniquely susceptible to the wheedlings of vain and they might respond to it if it were hermetically sealed clean room could not have manipulative grifters, condemned to follow shiny “breaking news.” Would they created a more perfect CNN segment. CNN objects until the end of time. Sometimes those continue watching for updates? vowed to stay with the story until Balloon Boy shiny objects are balloons. Sometimes they’re Why or why not? Then ask them was brought safely home. loudmouths with dumb opinions. And sometimes what appeals — ethos, logos, The homecoming would happen shortly, they’re presidential candidates. pathos — the report uses to attract an audience. but the story itself was an epic, full of twists and The alleged boy in the silver balloon was turns. By the end of the day, we had learned that 6-year-old Falcon Heene. His father, Richard Balloon Boy had never been inside the balloon, Heene, an amateur scientist and storm chaser, that he had been home all along, hiding in an kept a 20-foot-long experimental balloon — sorry, attic. By the end of the week, we had learned that a “3-D low altitude vehicle” — tied up and inflated CLOSE READING his unscrupulous parents had probably staged in the yard, as one does. Though his father had Paragraph 3 contains some the entire thing as a stunt to stoke interest in a scolded him for playing in the contraption, Falcon examples of strong diction that possible reality show. Today, the Balloon Boy saga nevertheless remained drawn to the balloon. This students could analyze for its is remembered, if at all, as a weird artifact from a boy was a real Balloon Boy, you might say, and effect and its relation to tone. For mildly simpler time, a moment when the media soon enough that was what we were all saying, instance, the phrase “chicanery gatekeepers were briefly and harmlessly fooled because around noon on that fatefully dumb of an unscrupulous jerk” moves by a particularly cunning specimen of indige- day, Falcon’s older brother told his father that the quickly from formal to informal. nous American fame whore. We were tricked; we younger child had climbed into the balloon and Students could identify examples laughed it off; we learned nothing. It happens. it had come unmoored. When he heard the news, to analyze in the paragraph, or you could use the paragraph to OTHER VOICES 355 anchor a discussion of tone or appeals. This paragraph also contains a preliminary thesis (see Exploring the Text Q7, too).

CLOSE READING CLOSE READING CLOSE READING Students could explore the phrase In paragraph 2, Peters tells an To begin a discussion of the “emotional simplicity and evoca- abbreviated version of the events. piece, and of how it uses humor, tive imagery” (para. 1): How does You might want to explore the you could ask students how the Peters’s claim here apply to cable function of the paragraph with interjections create tone in the news in general and to the balloon students, especially given that second sentence of paragraph 4. boy story in particular? Do Peters goes on to retell the story students agree with the assess- in more depth. Why give away the ment? And, how does it contrast ending of the event at the start of with Obama’s town hall meeting, the essay? In what ways does it which it superseded on CNN? Ask “[sell] Balloon Boy short” students to create a contrasting (para. 3)? phrase to describe the town hall meeting programming. Teacher’s Edition 355

Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 355 22/03/18 11:58 AM 6 Heene made a curious choice for a distraught Phillips: Rick, I don’t know if anybody is Popular Culture father: He called the local TV station. in there. No one seemed skeptical. A reporter’s job 5 Sanchez: . . . describe it for us. TEACHING IDEA can be a joy when the news comes to him. The Paragraphs 5–6 include several story spread from local to national news faster Phillips: They would be going right in. quotations from the TV reports. than a sprinting llama; CNN and the other cable Sanchez: I’ll tell you, it’s, it’s, you can To get students thinking about news networks carried the yarn for a breath- only hope he’s in there. But their purpose, ask them to reread less hour, teasing every possible bit of data and right now, I, I have not seen the paragraph without the quota- pathos out of the errant aircraft. What kind of them go in, and, uh . . . I have tions: How does the tone balloon was it: hot air or helium? (“I mean, you not seen them go in and get the change? Then, have them think of Mylar balloons with helium, you think of little boy out. It doesn’t even analyze how the juxtapositions birthday parties,” said Phillips. “You don’t think look like they’re making an with the quotations change the of some massive balloon taking your 6-year-old effort to — I am confused. tone and the meaning. You could airborne.”) How did the boy get inside the bal- have different pairs of students loon? (“I do not know the details, I’m sorry,” said Sanchez wasn’t the only one. Had Balloon Boy cover different quotations and a spokesperson for the Larimer County Sheriff’s really fallen out? Had he ever been in there at all? share with the class. You could Department.) At 3 p.m., CNN’s Rick Sanchez The Colorado Air National Guard sent a Blackhawk have them see how their analysis joined Phillips and ratcheted up the drama. “I helicopter to scour the countryside for any sign of of paragraphs 5–6 applies to the the child. “Right now, a search is underway for a dialogue in paragraph 7, too. want to grab through that screen, reach through that screen and grab that thing and bring it down 6-year-old boy who may or may not have climbed to earth,” he asserted. Minutes later, Phillips into a homemade helium balloon,” announced announced a terrible development: The sheriff’s Wolf Blitzer at the top of the 4 p.m. hour. Just over office feared the boy might have already fallen two hours later, we learned that Balloon Boy was out of the balloon. “Boy, I will tell you, Kyra, that’s hiding inside a box in the attic of the family garage. heartbreaking news,” said Sanchez. “Hopefully, “I played with my toys and took a nap,” he told it’s wrong for some reason. Sometimes, in news, reporters. And 300 million Americans muttered all we can do is hope that the information we get the immortal words of Uncle Frank in Home Alone: is wrong.” “Look what ya did, ya little jerk!” Finally, about an hour after CNN picked But the true jerks in this situation, it turned up the story, the balloon landed near Colorado out, were Balloon Boy’s parents. The New York Springs. “If you, uh, if you are predisposed to Times described Richard Heene as a “fame-seeking do so, and you want to say a little prayer . . . you backyard scientist,” which is the closest the Times might wanna do so now, because this 6-year- will ever come to calling someone a jackass. Heene old boy is about 100 feet from the ground,” was a former stand-up comedian who co-hosted said Sanchez. Rescue workers surrounded the an online talk show called the Psyience Detectives; craft — and discovered there was no Balloon Boy according to the YouTube clips I’ve found, the to be found in the Balloon Boy balloon. show’s editorial priorities centered on determining What a twist! The interplay between Phillips whether the world would end in 2012. (It did not.) and Sanchez at the moment of the reveal was The Heenes had previously appeared on the reality priceless: show Wife Swap, on which they switched places with a family of psychics from Florida. Sanchez: I’ll tell you, this is one of those On the night of the Balloon Boy incident, Wolf 10 stories that really will tell itself Blitzer hosted the Heenes for an interview. In it, shortly here. The picture . . . Blitzer accidentally broke some actual news: Asked

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CLOSE READING Students could examine paragraph 10 to analyze the rhetorical techniques that Peters uses to undermine Blitzer’s ethos.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 356 22/03/18 11:58 AM Peters by his father why he had hidden in the garage attic political show — during a week when health care, and ignored searchers’ cries, Falcon replied, “Um financial reform, and Afghanistan are all at the . . . you guys said . . . that, um . . . we did this for the tipping point?” asked Arianna Huffington in a col- The Ballad of Balloon Boy show.” (“Man . . . ” said his father. “No “No .. . . ?” said umn on her namesake website. The answer to that his mother.) It took about 30 minutes for Blitzer, question is not novel or interesting — everyone, God bless him, to follow up on that startling Arianna Huffington included, knows it. A cred- admission and ask Heene what his son had meant. ulous media that is enslaved to the production Heene replied by repeatedly saying that he was demands of our modern 17-second news cycle “appalled” that Blitzer would ask that question. (“I will pass along any dumb story without giving it was just grateful that he is just fine,” Blitzer crum- much thought. bled. “You have a beautiful family there.”) This is But the network wasn’t wholly at fault, either. what world-class liars do: They go big with their The balloon was in the air. The boy’s family said lies, and then bluster loudly when they’re called he was in it. The boy was nowhere to be found out on them — even when the person calling them at home. Who can blame CNN for going with it? out is barely even calling them out! It’s hard to report accurately on a story when the But what had Falcon meant by “the show”? prime mover of that story is blatantly lying to you. Three days later, the county sheriff announced It’s especially hard to report accurately when you that the Heenes had likely launched the hoax as a carry the news as it happens, when you outsource bid to stoke interest in a potential reality television the contextualization of the images you broadcast. program — ostensibly a revamped version of the The media, especially cable news, seems Psyience Detectives in which Heene and his family essentially passive; they’ve been trained to would go around solving psyientific mysteries. In wait for news to come to them. This assumed a sworn affidavit, Mayumi Heene admitted that passivity conceals the media’s own role in set- the Balloon Boy stunt was a hoax. Both of the ting the news agenda, in elevating things from Heene parents were charged with crimes: Richard curiosities to actual news stories. After picking up with attempting to influence a public servant, and the story toward the end of its 2 p.m. hour, CNN Mayumi with false reporting to authorities. Each broadcast an entire workday’s worth of Balloon served a short stint in jail. Boy; the only host that day who didn’t mention “Why continue the wall-to-wall coverage of the Heenes was Lou Dobbs, who spent an hour a story that had turned into a non-story — on a on Lou Dobbs Tonight discussing much less

How does this image show the ways that cable news was developing the story of Balloon Boy as the day progressed? In what ways does it illustrate the points Justin Peters makes about the role media plays in focusing national attention on certain topics?

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TEACHING IDEA Paragraphs 12–14 shift from listing quotations or by para- retelling the Balloon Boy story to phrasing in statements. Then, a broader critique of cable news. have them in a second column To help students understand the show how each of those points shift and Peters’s points, ask corresponds to an element of the them to read the three para- Balloon Boy story, perhaps by graphs and enumerate Peters’s citing quotations from earlier in points of criticism, either by the article.

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Pictured here is a young man dressed in a Balloon Boy costume at the 2009 West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnaval. Do you think this man would agree with Justin Peters about what made Balloon Boy such a fixture in the public imagination? Explain your answer. Gary Friedman/Getty Images 358

CHECK FOR BUILDING CONTEXT UNDERSTANDING Check YouTube for videos of In paragraph 16, Peters defines some of these updates about the “Balloon Boy” as a broadly appli- Heenes, if you like, but tell your cable label. You might have students you are feeding into the students paraphrase the defini- false celebrity machine that tion before identifying some Peters is condemning. Or, critique examples of the kind of people some of the videos to see if they who would fit that definition. (The include any “Balloon Boys” in Kardashians, perhaps?) You their updates about the Balloon might also address the fact that Boy. Peters does not include specific examples: Why not?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 358 22/03/18 11:58 AM Dylan you to learn that they moved to Florida. It will also called the Heene Boyz, and the front page of their TEACHING IDEA not surprise you to learn that Richard Heene now website features a pro-Trump anthem with Falcon By calling Donald Trump “the ulti-

claims the hoax was not actually a hoax, which is on lead vocals. “Say this for the Heenes . . . ” began Nobel Prize Banquet Speech mate Balloon Boy” (para. 17), exactly the sort of thing a hoaxster would say. It will a recent article in the Tampa Bay Times, “they are Peters adds a political judgment to definitely not surprise you to learn that they are big persistent.” Balloon Boys always are. The air is full his essay. First, you could ask fans of Donald J. Trump, the ultimate Balloon Boy. of them now, and they’re never going away. students why the designation The Heene boys are now in a heavy metal band [2016] might apply to Trump (you may or may not want to task students with EXPLORING THE TEXT identifying supporting evidence). Then, ask them why that seem- 1. What does the title “The Ballad of Balloon Boy” Who are the “special species of jerk” (para. 16), ingly offhand remark carries unex- suggest to you? What hint might it give as to the and what makes them special? Do you think contents of the essay? Having read the essay, how Peters considers them dangerous? Explain. pected weight in the article as a whole — Peters is engaging in a might the title be ironic? 7. What is Peters’s thesis? Look carefully at 2. Look carefully at the first paragraph, which seems paragraph 12 as you answer this question. polarizing subject in the conclusion of his essay, and his last to introduce the story of the boy trapped in a 8. What do you think Peters means when he says, helium balloon floating in the Colorado skies. What “It’s especially hard to report accurately when you sentence could be seen as a other subject does Justin Peters introduce at the carry the news as it happens, when you outsource comment about Trump’s popular- same time? What language in that paragraph the contextualization of the images you broadcast” ity. You can engage the students in reveals his attitude towards that subject? (para. 13)? Can you think of current situations where this discussion about the essay 3. Why does Peters think that the story of the Balloon the contextualization of images used on the news without engaging in an explicit Boy is more important than a “weird artifact from a are have been “outsourced”? political debate: Stay within the mildly simpler time” (para. 2)? 9. In paragraph 15, Peters states: “The media rhetorical strategies of the essay. 4. How does Peters build suspense as he retells the always has a choice of which stories to carry, Another tactic is to ask students saga of the Balloon Boy? What purpose does it how to frame those stories, and how much to discuss the hierarchy of purposes serve in Peters’s argument? credence to give their main actors.” What does in the essay. Peters critiques, he mean by this? Defend, challenge, or qualify 5. Peters cites several different sources in his essay. sequentially, (1) the Heenes family, Characterize the sources he uses. Do they help his statement. (2) cable news hosts, (3) cable news him establish credibility? In what ways do they 10. Do you care about where the Heenes are now? appeal to ethos? In what ways do they not? Based on what he writes in paragraph 17, why in general, (4) the “Balloon Boys” in the media, and (5) Trump. Ask 6. Who were the “true jerks” in the situation might Peters think his audience does? (para. 9)? Why does Peters consider them jerks? students to arrange them from most important to least important to Peters’s thesis. Nobel Prize Banquet Speech TEACHING IDEA BOB DYLAN The 2017 AP® Language argument Bob Dylan (b. 1941) is an American singer and songwriter. His numerous awards include question addressed the use of eleven Grammys, a Golden Globe, an Academy Award, and induction into the Rock and “artifice” in politics and consumer Roll Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. His early, iconic culture. You could ask students to songs such as “The Times They Are a-Changin’” became anthems for the civil rights and explain how Peters’s argument antiwar movements of the 1960s. His songwriting is known for its lyricism, and his musical could be applicable to that question. oeuvre is known for its wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. Dylan’s music incorporates folk, blues, country, gospel, rock and roll, rockabilly, and jazz. His TRM SUGGESTED acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize was delivered in absentia to the Nobel Banquet by RESPONSES Azita Raji, the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden. Suggested responses to the questions for this reading can be OTHER VOICES 359 found on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

TRM VOCABULARY A vocabulary exercise based on BUILDING CONTEXT BUILDING challenging words from this read- CONTEXT Obviously, listening to some of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” ing can be found on the Teacher’s Dylan’s songs will serve as are some of the classics — you Reading the bio that the Resource Flash Drive. context, as students may or may can also encourage them to listen Swedish Academy posts on its not be familiar with him. But it to other singers’ versions, such as site for the 2016 prize is also TB MULTIPLE might also be interesting to have ones by his contemporaries Joan relevant context (and it can be CHOICE students read and think about the Baez and the Byrds. Another read as an argument for Dylan’s ® speech without that explicit interesting cover students could merits, too). There’s a lot of For an AP -style multiple-choice context: Let them understand his listen to is Elvis’s version of a less- “literature” about Dylan — you question set on a passage from argument before exposing them er-known Dylan song, “Tomorrow could delve deeply, or not. You this reading, see The Language of to specific examples of his work. Is a Long Time.” Depending on might also show students a Composition, Third Edition Test When they do listen to (or read) students’ familiarity with Dylan, it bibliography of secondary Bank, which is both available in some songs — “Blowin’ in the may surprise them to discover sources about Dylan to give a ExamView format and integrated Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s Gonna that such iconic artists drew inspi- sense of his academic into the e-book. Fall,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” ration from his work. relevance. Teacher’s Edition 359

Popular Culture seeing connections

Punk-rock singer Patti Smith accepted Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize on his behalf, singing BUILDING CONTEXT his folk song, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (1962), with a full orchestral accompaniment. You might ask students to debate According to Amanda Petrusich, who wrote about the event for the New Yorker magazine, whether songs are literature, and, Dylan has said that particular song “was inspired, structurally, by seventeenth-century by extension, to define “litera- balladry: a question is posed, and answers stack up, though none are particularly ture.” Also, be sure they under- comforting. It’s the questioning, though — and, moreover, the accounting it inspires — that stand the process, relevance, and seems essential.” Later in the article, Petrusich asserts that the way Dylan accepted requirements of the Nobel Prizes. the prize — “with a folk song (and this specific folk song) performed by a surrogate, a peer” — was an artistic statement in itself, “[communicating] something significant about how and what he considers his own work (musical, chiefly), and the fluid, unsteady nature of balladry itself — both the ways in which old songs are fairly reclaimed by new performers, and how their meanings change with time.” How does the idea of “questioning” and “accounting” figure into Bob Dylan’s Nobel Banquet speech? To what extent do you agree with Petrusich’s characterization of Dylan’s attitude toward his work? Use evidence from his speech to support your response.

JESSICA GOW/Getty Images

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Academy and to all of the other distinguished “How should this be staged?” “Do I really want Nobel Prize Banquet Speech Ask students to examine the guests in attendance tonight. to set this in Denmark?” His creative vision and questions Dylan speculates I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his Shakespeare might have asked please know that I am most definitely with you mind, but there were also more mundane mat- (para. 5), and why Dylan calls them in spirit and honored to be receiving such a ters to consider and deal with. “Is the financing “mundane matters.” Students prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize in place?” “Are there enough good seats for my should understand that these are for Literature is something I never could have patrons?” “Where am I going to get a human not questions that conventionally imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve skull?” I would bet that the farthest thing from concern “ literature.” been familiar with and reading and absorbing the Shakespeare’s mind was the question “Is this works of those who were deemed worthy of such literature?” CLOSE READING a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl When I started writing songs as a teenager, Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of and even as I started to achieve some renown You might discuss with students the effect of italicizing “literature” literature whose works are taught in the school- for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs at the end of paragraph 5. room, housed in libraries around the world and only went so far. I thought they could be heard in spoken of in reverent tones have always made a coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like deep impression. That I now join the names on Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was such a list is truly beyond words. really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine get- I don’t know if these men and women ever ting to make a record and then hearing my songs thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but on the radio. That was really the big prize in my I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, mind. Making records and hearing your songs or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that on the radio meant that you were reaching a big secret dream deep down inside. It’s probably bur- audience and that you might get to keep doing ied so deep that they don’t even know it’s there. what you had set out to do. If someone had ever told me that I had the Well, I’ve been doing what I set out to do for CLOSE READING slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, a long time, now. I’ve made dozens of records Students could define how Dylan I would have to think that I’d have about the and played thousands of concerts all around uses paragraph 7 to define same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, the world. But it’s my songs that are at the vital himself as a songwriter rather during the year I was born and for a few years center of almost everything I do. They seemed than a performer, and why that is after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was to have found a place in the lives of many peo- relevant to his speech. considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. ple throughout many different cultures and I’m So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to grateful for that. TEACHING IDEA say the least. But there’s one thing I must say. As a per- You could have students briefly I was out on the road when I received this 5 former I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve debate whether they see Dylan’s surprising news, and it took me more than a few played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is comparison of himself to minutes to properly process it. I began to think harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have Shakespeare as egotistical or as about William Shakespeare, the great literary a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person an effective argument. At some figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as has an individual, separate identity, a world point, you may need to steer them a dramatist. The thought that he was writing unto themselves. They can perceive things more to recognize the latter by asking literature couldn’t have entered his head. His clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the why a comparison to a novelist or words were written for the stage. Meant to be depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the a poet might be less apt. Also, spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me. Shakespeare is often called “The Bard”; Dylan has also been called

OTHER VOICES 361 a bard. You might have students explore the meanings of that term and discuss its applications.

CLOSE READING CHECK FOR Students can focus on the UNDERSTANDING appeals in this speech — particu- Ask students to define the larly in terms of how the second purpose of paragraphs 3–4: have paragraph helps to establish them identify three or more points Dylan’s ethos. that Dylan wants to convey to the audience.

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CLOSE READING Popular Culture pied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors taking the time to consider that very question, and, At the end of the speech, Dylan and dealing with all aspects of life’s mundane ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer. seems to defer to the Swedish matters. “Who are the best musicians for these My best wishes to you all, Academy by giving it credit for songs?” “Am I recording in the right studio?” “Is answering the question about this song in the right key?” Some things never Bob Dylan literature. Students can explain change, even in 400 years. [2017] why that is an effective rhetorical Not once have I ever had the time to ask 10 move. myself, “Are my songs literature?”

TRM SUGGESTED EXPLORING THE TEXT RESPONSES 1. How does Bob Dylan establish credibility in his 5. Why do you think Dylan used William Shakespeare Suggested responses to the Nobel Banquet Speech? Consider the fact that as an example of a “great literary figure” who might someone else is delivering it in his stead, and he is not have asked if his work was literature? How questions for this reading can be not in attendance. does Dylan establish a connection to him? found on the Teacher’s Resource 2. How would you describe the tone of Dylan’s 6. In what ways does the speech appeal to logos? Flash Drive. speech? In what ways does he honor the 7. What is the primary claim Dylan makes about occasion? In what ways does his distinctly audience? How does his speech reflect it? American voice come through? 8. Dylan’s Nobel Prize win sparked an intense debate 3. What central question does the speech pose? How about whether he should have been given the does Dylan answer it? award and whether his songs qualified as literature. 4. In paragraph 4, Dylan alludes to the fact that the How do you define literature? After listening to Nobel Prize in Literature was not awarded in 1940, some of Dylan’s music, do you believe it to be 1941, 1942, or 1943 — the height of World War II, literature according to your definition? Do you think during which Sweden was able to maintain neutrality. Dylan should have won the Nobel Prize? Explain Why might Dylan have mentioned that in his speech? your answer.

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TEACHING IDEA TEACHING IDEA Dylan delivered a longer speech, The Nobel Prize site for the 2016 Since Dylan’s award was his “Lecture on Literature,” which Prize in Literature contains other controversial, you could have students can read and listen to speeches and essays that are rele- students read some of the argu- online on the Nobel Prize website. vant to the discussion: the brief ments against his deserving the In it, he discusses Melville’s Moby- announcement video; Dylan’s award. You could engage Dick, Remarque’s All Quiet on the biography; and, most relevant, the students in a researched debate, Western Front, and Homer’s Award Ceremony Speech by a or you could have them examine Odyssey. You can ask students to member of the Swedish Academy. various responses and analyze listen to and compare it to the You could have different students the different definitions of litera- Banquet Speech. Which do they read or watch different ones and ture that arise. Using the Toulmin prefer as a defense of using the report back on how they make method, if students know it, to term “literature” to describe Dylan’s their arguments that Dylan merits analyze these types of arguments work as a songwriter, and why? the award. could also be revealing. 362 The Language of Composition

Portrait of Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children

JOHN SINGER SARGENT John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was an American artist who was considered the leading portrait painter of his generation for his evocations of turn-of-the-century luxury. Born in Florence, Italy, to American expatriates, Sargent was well-traveled as a youth and went on to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Eventually settling in London, Sargent went on to paint around 900 oil paintings, more than 2,000 watercolors, and countless sketches and charcoal drawings. During his lifetime, Sargent’s work was highly prized for its detailed brushwork and ability to evoke the inner lives of his subjects. The subject of this painting is Mrs. Adele Meyer and her children. A philanthropist and social activist in her own right (she worked to establish minimum wage in England), Adele was the wife of a German-born and Jewish English financier.

EXPLORING THE TEXT TRM SUGGESTED RESPONSES 1. In this painting, it looks as if Mrs. Meyer is about these over-civilised European Orientals,’ a critic to tumble out of her seat. A perspective (the for the Spectator wrote in 1897. And . . . another Suggested responses to the view from which you see the subjects) with such writer sniped, ‘$10,000 was not much for a questions for this reading can be extreme foreshortening was called a “worm’s eye multimillionaire Israelite to pay to secure social found on the Teacher’s Resource view” in John Singer Sargent’s time. What do you recognition for his family.’ ” What preconceptions Flash Drive make of the effect of the painting’s perspective? might Sargent have expected his audience to Does it provide information about the subjects and have? Do you see any evidence of how this their social position? About the painter? About the work addressed those preconceptions? Explain social norms of the era? your answer. 2. What clues does the painting offer about the 4. In an 1897 review, the writer Henry James dynamics of the Meyer family? Look at both the described Sargent’s work — then on exhibit in ways the subjects connect to each other as well as London — as “a knockdown insolence of talent and how Sargent utilizes color and contrast. truth of characterization, a wonderful rendering of 3. According to the New York Times review of a life, of manners, of aspects, of types, of textures, 2016 exhibit of the painting at New York’s Jewish of everything.” What are some of the manners, Museum, some of the initial reactions to the aspects, types, and textures that you see here? painting, which was generally very well received, What do those things tell us about the subjects were openly anti-Semitic: “ ‘Even Mr. Sargent’s of the painting? How can you tell there is “truth of skill has not succeeded in making attractive characterization”?

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CAROLINE SANDS/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images [1896] 364

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ANDY WARHOL Myths Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was an American artist who was as well-known for his persona as for his work. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is famous for his silkscreens and paintings of American manufactured products such as Campbell’s Soup and Coca-Cola, as well as American celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. The ten figures in the painting below, from left to right, are Superman, Santa Claus, Howdy Doody, Greta Garbo, Mickey Mouse, Uncle Sam, Aunt Jemima, Dracula, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Warhol himself.

BUILDING CONTEXT Viewing other images by Andy Warhol and providing a short background on his place in American pop culture would be a great beginning. Chances are students have probably seen images by Warhol but don’t have much knowledge of the artist and his time. Going through and identifying specific figures in the image would be helpful as well, since many students may not know certain ones, particularly Howdy Doody and Aunt Jemima. You might have students do a bit of Internet research to enhance their awareness of these dated figures. © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York New Arts, Fine Feldman / Ronald York Arts Society / Artists for the Visual Rights (ARS), New Foundation Warhol Andy © 2017 The [1981] 365

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from Formation

Directed by Melina Matsoukas, “Formation” is a Grammy-winning music video released simultaneously with the song “Formation,” recorded by Beyoncé in 2016. The video stars Beyoncé herself and is notable for its references to New Orleans culture, Hurricane Katrina, African American culture, the empowerment of women of color, and of race relations in the United States in the wake of the controversies surrounding the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. The “Formation” video went viral upon release, inspiring many interpretations, much praise, and some criticism. The image that follows is emblematic of the historically and politically significant images collaged together throughout the video. As Jessica Bolanos explained in the Huffington Post, “The clothing worn in these scenes represent a time before and after slaves were freed. . . . White corsets, binding the women — during a time when slaves were technically ‘free’ but still being oppressed.”

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TRM SUGGESTED RESPONSES [2016] Suggested responses to the questions for this reading can be found on the Teacher’s Resource EXPLORING THE TEXT Flash Drive.

1. Looking carefully at this image from Beyoncé’s 4. The clothes worn by the women in this image are “Formation” video, describe what you see. What takes on antebellum fashion from the American are the women doing? How are they positioned? South. What cultural statement might Beyoncé be What are they wearing? What do the expressions making about the way the women are dressed? on their faces convey? What do you notice How does the women’s clothing vary from the in the background? Once you’ve made these typical images of antebellum fashion? Why might observations, characterize the attitude of the these outfits — and other outfits Beyoncé dons in women in the scene, taking their expressions, the video — be seen as controversial? clothing, positions, and background into 5. What similarities do you see in how the painting consideration. of the Meyer family (p. 364) and this still from the 2. The lyrics from this scene of the video are “Formation” music video address their respective “Sometimes I go off (I go off), I go hard (I go hard), audiences and mainstream cultures? In what get what’s mine (take what’s mine), I’m a star (I’m a ways might the message and rhetoric of each star) / ‘Cause I slay (slay), I slay (hey), I slay (okay), work be seen as parallel? In what ways do they I slay (okay) / Okay, okay, ladies now let’s get in differ? formation.” These lyrics, with slight variations, are 6. A hallmark of twenty-first century art is the repeated in other scenes from the video, but what appropriation — quoting or borrowing — of other particular power do they have here? In other words, art. What has Beyoncé borrowed in this image? how does this image visually represent those lyrics? What is the relationship between the old and Consider such techniques as color, composition, the new? How does the appropriation create a and perspective. conversation between the artist and the viewer? 3. Visual art can be analyzed through the rhetorical Between the past and the present? triangle (see Chapter 1). Consider the video, the artist, and the audience separately. What are the relationships among these three elements? What message do they convey?

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The Value of Celebrity Activism The following eight texts comment directly or indirectly on celebrities’ role in social change and their responsibility to society.

SOURCES 1 C. Wright Mills / from The Power Elite 2 Dave Gilson / Dr. Clooney, I Presume? (illustration) 3 Brad Knickerbocker / West Memphis Three: Internet Campaign, Hollywood Drove Their Release 4 Andres Jimenez / Why Celebrity Activism Does More Harm Than Good 5 Jeffrey Kluger / Jim Carrey, Please Shut Up about Vaccines 6 Georgia Cole, Ben Radley, and Jean-Benoît Felisse / Who Really Benefits from TRM VOCABULARY Celebrity Activism? A vocabulary exercise based on 7 Joshua Ostroff / Beyoncé and Why Celebrity Activists Matter challenging words from this read- 8 Jay Caspian Kang / Should Athletes Stick to Sports? ing can be found on the Teacher’s After you have read, studied, and synthesized these pieces, enter the conversation by Resource Flash Drive. responding to one of the prompts on pages 384–85.

TB MULTIPLE CHOICE For an AP®-style multiple-choice from The Power Elite question set on a passage from 1 this reading, see the The C. WRIGHT MILLS Language of Composition, Third Edition Test Bank, which is both C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was an influential American sociologist. The following excerpt is available in ExamView format and from his 1956 book entitled The Power Elite, which examines the nature of celebrity and power. integrated into the e-book. ll those who succeed in America — no matter supplement, and even to displace the society lady BUILDING CONTEXT Awhat their circle of origin or their sphere and the man of pedigreed wealth. Some understanding of the histor- of action — are likely to become involved in the With the incorporation of the economy, the ical changes in the entertainment world of the celebrity. This world, which is now ascendancy of the military establishment, and industry could be relevant for the American forum of public honor, has not been the centralization of the enlarged state, there students. They might research, build from below, as a slow and steady linking of have arisen the national elite, who, in occupying quickly, some of the most popular local societies and metropolitan 400’s. It has been the command posts of the big hierarchies, have movie stars, musicians, and radio created from above. Based upon nation-wide taken the spotlight of publicity and become and television personalities of the hierarchies of power and wealth, it is expressed by subjects of the intensive build-up. At the same era, say 1953–1956. It was early in nation-wide means of mass communication. As time, with the elaboration of the national means the history of television and of these hierarchies and these media have come to of mass communication, the professional celeb- rock and roll, which was also the overlay American society, new types of prestigeful rities of the entertainment world have come birth of the teenager as a market- men and women have come to compete with, to fully and continuously into the national view. ing target group. A list of “celebrities” from the early 1950s might provide context. 368

TEACHING IDEA The rather formal language of this excerpt may challenge students. You might present the essay as an BUILDING CONTEXT CHECK FOR interrupted reading by having The “metropolitan 400’s” (para. 1) UNDERSTANDING students discuss or comment on are the old money elite, those on You might ask students to small sections as they read the the Social Register. Especially if summarize Mills’s definition of first three or more paragraphs. students have read The Great what he later refers to as the Another approach would be to Gatsby, you might have them “institutional elite” (para. 2). have the students outline the discuss the class differences Challenge them to provide exam- essay as they read, to recognize between old money and new ples of institutional elites. major points and supporting ones. money, and compare it to the comments in paragraph 1 (recog- nizing, though, that Mills’s essay came decades later than Fitzgerald’s novel).

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 368 22/03/18 11:58 AM il Mills As personalities of national glamour, they are at also select and create celebrities for a profit. One TEACHING IDEA the focal point of all the means of entertainment type of celebrity, accordingly, is a professional at

and publicity. Both the metropolitan 400 and the it, earning sizeable income not only from working The Power Elite Beginning with paragraph 5, Mills institutional elite must now compete with and in, but virtually living on, the mass media of com- condemns the “media” explicitly. borrow prestige from these professionals in the munication and distraction. Ask students to analyze the world of the celebrity. The movie stars and the Broadway actress, extent to which Mills blames the media for celebrity culture and to But what are the celebrities? The celebrities the crooners and the TV clowns, are celebrities what extent he blames the public, are The Names that need no further identification. because of what they do on and to these media. the celebrities themselves, or Those who know them so far exceed those of whom They are celebrated because they are displayed other factors. You might raise this they know as to require no exact computation. as celebrities. If they are not thus celebrated, in question here, and then have Wherever the celebrities go, they are recognized, due time — often very short — they lose their students consider it through the and moreover, recognized with some excitement jobs. In them, the panic for status has become a rest of the essay. and awe. Whatever they do has publicity value. professional craving: their very image of self is More or less continuously, over a period of time, dependent upon publicity, and they need increas- CLOSE READING they are the material for the media communi- ing doses of it. Often they seem to have celebrity cation and entertainment. And, when that time and nothing else. Rather than being celebrated Note the use of chiasmus in para- ends — as it must — and the celebrity still lives — as because they occupy positions of prestige, they graph 6. Ask students why it is a he may — from time to time it may be asked, occupy positions of prestige because they are cele- productive rhetorical strategy here. “Remember him?” That is what celebrity means. . . . brated. The basis of the celebration — in a strange The professional celebrity, male and female, is and intricate way — is at once personal and syn- the crowning result of the star system of a society thetic: it is their Talent — which seems to mean that makes a fetish of competition. In America, their appearance value and their skill combined this system is carried to the point where a man into what is known as A Personality. Their very who can knock a small white ball into a series of importance makes them seem charming people, holes in the ground with more efficiency and skill and they are celebrated all the time: they seem to than anyone else thereby gains social access to live a sort of gay, high life, and others, by curiously the President of the United States. It is carried to watching them live it, celebrate them, as well as the point where a chattering radio and television their celebrated way of lifelife.. . . . entertainer becomes the hunting chum of leading ◆ ◆ ◆ industrial executives, cabinet members, and the higher military. It does not seem to matter what In the meantime, the American celebrities the man is the very best at; so long as he has won include the trivial as well as the grim. Behind all out in competition over all others, he is celebrated. The Names are the images displayed in tabloid Then, a second feature of the star system begins to and on movie screen, over radio and televi- work: all the stars of any other sphere of endeavor sion — and sometimes not displayed but just or position are drawn toward the new star and he imagined. For now all of the higher types are seen toward them. The success, the champion, accord- by those lower down as celebrities. In the world ingly, is one who mingles freely with other cham- of the celebrities, seen through the magnifying pions to populate the world of the celebrity. glass of the mass media, men and women now TEACHING IDEA This world is at once the pinnacle of the 5 form a kaleidoscope of highly distracting images: The colon at the end of para- prestige system and a big-scale business. As a In downtown New York, on a short street with graph 7 is important: It introduces business, the networks of mass communication, a graveyard at one end and a river at the other, the the list of “distracting images” in publicity, and entertainment are not only the rich are getting out of company limousines. On the the rest of the essay. As students means whereby celebrities are celebrated; they flattened top of an Arkansas hill, the grandson of a read the rest of the essay, they might enumerate the images Mills The Value of Celebrity Activism CONVERSATION 369 conjures in his writing to better comprehend what purpose each image serves. You could then divide them up and ask students to explain how each one exempli- TEACHING IDEA CLOSE READING fies Mills’s claim. What kinds of Mills defines “celebrities” and the Ask students to analyze how “celebrity” do they exemplify? “professional celebrity” in para- Mills’s tone shifts in paragraph 4 — graphs 3 and 4. You could ask his disregard for celebrities students to turn these two para- becomes more overt with words graphs into dictionary-style defi- such as “fetish” and “chattering.” nitions or bullet-point lists of Students could underline words qualities. Then, ask them to list and phrases in this paragraph contemporary examples of each. (and then elsewhere in the essay) Do all facets of Mills’s definition that create his tone. still apply today?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 369 22/03/18 11:58 AM 6 late mogul is creating a ranch with the enthusiasm Texas, it is reported that 103 women have each

BUILDING CONTEXT Popular Culture of a schoolboy. Behind a mahogany table in the paid $300 for a gold lipstick. On a yacht, with its The reference to senators in para- caucus room of the United States Senate, seven crew of ten, somewhere off the Keys, a man of graph 8 is likely an allusion to the senators lean toward the television lenses. In Texas distinction lies on his bed and worries about the McCarthy trials. You might ask an oil man, it is said, is taking out two hundred report from his New York office that the agents of students to speculate on whether thousand dollars a day. Somewhere in Maryland the Bureau of Internal Revenue are busy again. other references in this paragraph people in red coats are riding to hounds; in a Park Here are the officials at the big desks with the 10 are literal events or general, hypo- Avenue apartment, a coal miner’s daughter, having four telephones, the ambassadors in the lounge- thetical examples (most seem lived in the married state for twenty months, has rooms, talking earnestly but somehow lightly. Here literal). If students believe any of are the men who motor in from the airport with a them would benefit from more just decided to accept a five-and-one-half million context, they could research them dollar settlement. At Kelly Field, the General walks secret service man beside the chauffeur, motorcy- to see if they can discover any carelessly between rows of painfully rigid men; on cled outriders on either flank, and another tailing a additional information. Fifty-Seventh Street, expensive women inspect the block behind. Here are the people whose circum- taut manikins. Between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, stances make them independent of the good will of an American-born Countess is found dead in her others, never waiting for anyone but always waited railway compartment, lying full-length in a long upon. Here are the Very Important Persons who mink coat alongside a quarter of a million dollars during the wars come and go, doubled up in the worth of jewelry. Seated in Boston, a board of direc- General’s jeep. Here are those who have ascended tors orders three industrial plants moved, without to office, who have been elevated to distinguished employees, to Nashville. And in Washington, D.C., employments. By the sound of their voices, it is a sober politician, surrounded by high military evident that they have been trained, carefully yet aides and scientific advisers, orders a team of casually, to be somebody. American airmen to fly toward Hiroshima. Here are the names and faces and voices that CLOSE READING In Switzerland are those who never know are always before you, in the newspapers and on winter except as the chosen occasion for sport, on the radio, in the newsreels and on the television Students could analyze the shift southern islands those who never sweat in the sun screen; and also the names and faces you do not from paragraph 8 to 9. Why does except at their February leisure. All over the world, know about, not even from a distance, but who Mills conclude paragraph 8 with a like lords of creation, are those who, by travel, really run things, or so informed sources say, but reference to (dropping the atom command the seasons and, by many houses, you could never prove it. Here are the somebodies bomb on) Hiroshima, and why does he begin the next one with a the very landscape they will see each morning who are held to be worthy of notice: now they are reference to Switzerland? or afternoon they are awakened. Here is the old news, later they will be history. Here are the men whiskey and the new vice; the blonde girl with who own a firm of lawyers and four accountants. the moist mouth, always ready to go around the Here are the men who have the inside track. Here world; the silver Mercedes climbing the mountain are all the expensive commodities, to which the bend, going where it wants to go for so long as it rich seem appendages. Here is the money talking wants to stay. From Washington, D.C., and Dallas, in its husky, silky voice of cash, power, celebrity.

QUESTIONS

1. What, according to C. Wright Mills, is a competition” (para. 4)? According to him, what are celebrity? How does he believe celebrities some of the results? are created? 3. Mills suggests that the world of the celebrity is the 2. What does Mills mean when he asserts that we live result of a prestige system but is also a “big-scale in a “star system of a society that makes a fetish of business” (para. 5). What does that business do? 370

TEACHING IDEA Mills broadens his argument in his might ask them what the title of the final paragraph. Students could book, The Power Elite, adds to our identify the rhetorical strategies understanding of this paragraph. In (especially the shift to the second addition, you could also explore the person and the use of anaphora) extent to which his comments are and analyze them to articulate what gendered (“Here are the men …”) they add to his argument. You here and throughout the essay.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 370 22/03/18 11:58 AM Who participates in it? Who benefits from it? What 5. The Power Elite, from which this excerpt is taken, Gilson pressures does it create? was published in 1956. What aspects of modern- 4. What role does Mills believe money plays in the day celebrity culture did Mills predict? Do you find

creation and placement of celebrities? this piece timely? Explain your answer. Dr. Clooney, I Presume?

2 Dr. Clooney, I Presume? A Map of the Celebrity Recolonization of Africa

DAVE GILSON The following illustration is taken from an interactive map detailing celebrity visits to Africa. First published on Mother Jones’s website in 2010, it was prefaced with the following text.

versized shades have replaced pith helmets, The map below takes a lighter look at the Obut the new scramble for Africa has its share of sometimes serious, sometimes silly business of adventurers, would-be saviors, and even turf battles. celebrity altruism. As Madonna’s publicist explains, “She’s focusing on Malawi. South Africa is Oprah’s territory.”

KEY: WHAT THEY DID THERE Took a fact- nding trip Built/rebuilt a school Started a charity Sang a song about it Made a lm Wrote a book about it Got a royal title Acquired a child

SUDAN/DARFUR Don Cheadle George Clooney Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie Mia Farrow Dave Eggers

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Popular Culture QUESTIONS

1. How would you characterize the tone of the map Morton Stanley gave to David Livingstone and its key to “celebrity recolonization”? after finding him in Tanzania in 1871. Stanley, a 2. Why do you think the map is subtitled “An British journalist, had been tasked with locating Interactive Map of the Celebrity Recolonization of Livingstone, a medical missionary and antislavery Africa”? crusader, who had not been seen or heard from since departing to explore the Nile River almost 3. What do the activities of each of the celebrities six years prior. Its humor and staying power are in the inset tell you about their interests and partly related to the fact that Livingstone was the commitments? only white man for hundreds of miles. Why might 4. “Dr. Clooney, I presume” is an allusion to Dave Gilson have made George Clooney the “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” the greeting Henry subject of that famous quote?

TRM VOCABULARY 3 West Memphis Three: Internet Campaign, Hollywood A vocabulary exercise based on Drove Their Release challenging words from this reading can be found on the Teacher’s BRAD KNICKERBOCKER Resource Flash Drive. The following article was published in the Christian Science Monitor in 2011 by longtime writer and editor Brad Knickerbocker. TB MULTIPLE CHOICE For an AP®-style multiple-choice he release Friday of the “West Memphis Friday’s outcome was not a clear victory for question set on a passage from Three” — the men convicted in the 1993 killing the West Memphis Three (so-called because of this reading, see the The T of three young Cub Scouts in Arkansas — testifies to the place in Arkansas where the crime occurred) Language of Composition, Third the power of the Internet and broadcast media in or for the families of the three 8-year old boys. As Edition Test Bank, which is both influencing the criminal justice system. the prosecuting attorney, Scott Ellington, put it: available in ExamView format and integrated into the e-book. Questions about the prosecution of the case “Some are happy, some are angry, and others are and conduct of the trial — raised by supporters perplexed.” of defendants Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, While maintaining their innocence, the three 5 BUILDING CONTEXT and Jessie Misskelley Jr. — generated widespread men agreed to a legal maneuver that lets them To help students understand the interest through such websites as “Free the WM3 maintain their innocence while acknowledging significance of the events Support Fund” and its “Free the West Memphis that prosecutors have enough evidence against Knickerbocker describes in his Three Official Blog.” Facebook, Twitter, and them. They were sentenced to time served, article, you could have them YouTube videos helped spread the word. allowing their immediate release. research a brief history of the That would have been far less possible “It’s not perfect by any means,” Mr. Echols West Memphis Three: the original 18 years ago when this particularly heinous said at a press conference Friday. “But it at least crime and the controversy about crime occurred. Not only have social media and brings closure to some areas and some aspects.” the sentencing. They could also websites aimed at affecting legal outcomes prolif- The three say they will continue to fight to prove research some of the media coverage and celebrity support erated, but powerful search engines have created their innocence. for the accused. If students have easy access to detailed case information and the The solidity of the case against them began devices and you want to open the assertions of advocacy groups. to crack when DNA evidence could not be door to general searches, you could ask different students to search different platforms (see 372 the ones listed in para. 2) for references to the West Memphis Three prior to their release from prison in 2011. They could also explore the HBO series Paradise Lost, referenced in paragraph 9.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 372 22/03/18 11:58 AM Knickerbocker linked to the defendants while at the same time death sentence], has himself become a celebrity indicating the possible presence at the crime author and poet.” scene of one of the boy’s stepfather. Questions Other observers say there’s a lesson here for also had been raised about the jury foreman dis- investigative writers and broadcasters. cussing during jury deliberations a confession “I think this is actually the media at their TEACHING IDEA deemed inappropriate at trial. (That confession best, shining a light on a situation in which the W est Memphis Three:Campaign Internet For the synthesis question on the by Mr. Misskelley — reportedly elicited by police machinery of government apparently failed to AP Language exam, students taking advantage of his low IQ — was quickly do its job,” says Fordham University commu- should be able to identify quickly recanted.) nications professor Paul Levinson, author of key quotations to use in their Last November, the Arkansas Supreme Court “New New Media.” “It asks the question — ‘What essays. The claim at the start of ordered a new hearing, asking a judge to consider other failures of the criminal system are out paragraph 12 is central to the allegations of juror misconduct and whether new there?’ — and provides the impetus that jour- larger argument about celebrity DNA science could affect the conviction. nalists should get on those cases and investigate activism. You could identify it, Over the years, much has been written them more fully.” and then ask students to explain about the case, and HBO is finishing up the It’s notable that Hollywood actors are spear- why it is “quotable,” or you could third in a series of documentary films titled heading the drive for social justice, including in ask them to find two key quota- “Paradise Lost.” The HBO series, along with the Memphis case, says Ben Agger, director of the tions in the excerpt and defend books and websites, helped generate broad Center for Theory at the University of Texas in their choices. This task is relevant support from such celebrities as actor Johnny Arlington. in all the Conversation excerpts. Depp, “Pearl Jam” front man Eddie Vedder, and “Many academics have become entrepre- country singer Natalie Maines of the “Dixie neurs oriented to getting grants that help public CHECK FOR Chicks.” universities survive at an historical moment of UNDERSTANDING “This case is about the power of film and 10 massive disinvestment in higher education,” he Students could define “critical a main protagonist,” says Nancy Snow, pro- says. “Ironically, this leaves Hollywood as the site thinking and moral activism” fessor of communications at California State of critical thinking and moral activism. This is a (para. 14) as it relates to celebrity University in Fullerton. “Without the ‘Paradise version of Hollywood that clashes with a People involvement in the story of the Lost’ series, you simply would not have the magazine portrayal of Hollywood simply as a West Memphis Three. What is same level of celebrity cheerleading for justice. celebrity culture, where the Kardashian wedding Knickerbocker’s position here? The main wrongly accused character, Damien is foregrounded as weekly tabloid fodder.” Echols [the one defendant who had received a

QUESTIONS

1. In this report, Brad Knickerbocker credits the “power 2. Knickerbocker notes that observers have said of the Internet and broadcast media in influencing “there’s a lesson here for investigative writers and the criminal justice system” (para. 1) for the release broadcasters” (para. 11) in the story of the West of three men who were likely wrongly convicted of Memphis Three. What is that lesson? killing three young boys nearly twenty years prior. 3. Knickerbocker asserts that it’s “notable that What relationship does Knickerbocker suggest Hollywood actors are spearheading the drive for exists between the media, the celebrities, and social justice” (para. 13). How does he explain the West Memphis Three? What do you believe is that irony? Knickerbocker’s attitude toward this relationship?

The Value of Celebrity Activism CONVERSATION 373

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Ask students to explain the meaning of “a main protagonist” in paragraph 10. How is having a protagonist important for this sort of narrative? How would it differ without a main protagonist?

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TRM VOCABULARY Popular Culture 4 Why Celebrity Activism Does More Harm Than Good A vocabulary exercise based on challenging words from this read- ANDRES JIMENEZ ing can be found on the Teacher’s The following article by Andres Jimenez, an international conflict analyst and activist, was Resource Flash Drive. published in 2013 on the website for Waging Nonviolence, an organization that describes itself as “a source for original news and analysis about struggles for justice and peace TB MULTIPLE around the globe.” CHOICE

® For an AP -style multiple-choice s I sat in the stands of Pece Stadium in the If only enough people knew and cared about a question set on a passage from Anorthern Uganda town of Gulu on a sunny certain conflict or problem, the assumption goes, this reading, see the The Sunday morning, a couple of young men made then the combined energy and support could be Language of Composition, Third their way close to where I was sitting. We struck harnessed in order to trigger an immediate flood Edition Test Bank, which is both up a conversation, and they said that it was a pity of solutions. Any action taken toward this end is available in ExamView format and that I had not witnessed the event that had taken therefore righteous and will put us a step closer integrated into the e-book. place not long before my arrival in town a few to fixing the problem; surely any little bit of help weeks earlier. must be better than nothing. CLOSE READING My new friends began to describe how there It is this mindset that has motivated celeb- 5 Jimenez begins with an anecdote had been a massive gathering in the stadium for rities like the rock star Bono to take up the set in Uganda. Ask students to the screening of a video put together by a foreign causes of debt cancelation, the increase in for- analyze the blend of ethos, logos, NGO.1 The video had profoundly upset a signifi- eign aid and the promotion of the Millennium and pathos in the first three para- cant amount of those present that evening, and a Development Goals. Actor George Clooney has graphs, and then to discuss the riot broke out. I realized that, of course, they were taken great interest in Darfur; Madonna and anecdote’s effectiveness as an talking about the launch of the first Kony 2012 Oprah Winfrey have embraced the fight for girls’ introduction. video campaign by the U.S.–based organization education in Africa, while Angelina Jolie knocks Invisible Children. The video’s portrayal of the at the doors of the major centers of power as over two-decade-long conflict had deeply angered a UNHCR2 Goodwill Ambassador to promote many of those who had endured it firsthand. The support for humanitarian relief. Unfortunately, crowd ended up having to be dispersed by police many of the policies and remedies promoted by and tear gas. this ever-growing influx of celebrity activists have As I listened to the men’s account of how the been heavily criticized for being paternalistic, crowd’s anger turned to violence, I could hardly detached from reality and often dangerously keep myself from thinking how emblematic and counterproductive. representative such an event was of countless However, far from being deterred, celebrity celebrity-fueled, do-good awareness campaigns activists find solace in the assurances of so-called that I had already had the misfortune to witness experts, specialists and analysts who fill the over the years. ranks of leading international organizations, The tragedy behind these sorts of campaigns Washington think tanks and Ivy League univer- is that they are motivated by the belief that prob- sities. These people are the Nicholas Kristofs and lems around the world remain unresolved due the Jeffry Sachses of the world who often find to the lack of international awareness of their their self-assurance and sense of certainty in their existence or global commitment to resolve them. 2 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more commonly 1Non-governmental organization. —Eds. known as the UN Refugee Agency. —Eds.

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TEACHING IDEA BUILDING CONTEXT CHECK FOR In paragraph 4, Jimenez presents You could cross-reference the UNDERSTANDING his perspective on the logic of the Gilson illustration text (“Dr. Consider asking students why campaigns. If students are famil- Clooney, I Presume?” [p. 371]) Jimenez singles out the Ivy iar with the Toulmin method, they with Jimenez’s points in League in paragraph 6. What could apply that method of paragraph 5. broader ideas does he suggest analyzing argument to the infor- by those references? How do mation in this paragraph, and they affect his tone? then to Jimenez’s own argument in the essay.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 374 22/03/18 11:58 AM Ivy League educations, in the power that their We need to distance ourselves from the pow- Jimenez TEACHING IDEA positions grant them or in the titles that they hold. erful desire to follow simple solutions drafted by Their almost complete confidence in their predic- experts in conference rooms half a world away. We You could task students with enumerating the steps Jimenez

tions and analyses, combined with the allure of should begin, above all, by focusing on the creative Why Celebrity Activism Does More Harm Than Good celebrity, emboldens them to leap at the oppor- energy already present among the local actors in a proposes for productive activism tunity to promote what they consider to be the conflict in order to discover context-specific strate- as he presents them in paragraphs 9–12. Then, you might ask solutions for conflicts whose complexities they gies that can help us to transform it. them to identify a global cause only superficially grasp. Sadly, this approach does not fit well in a 10 that they believe in, and outline Celebrity-led campaigns do often prove to five-minute YouTube video or an inspirational an action plan that corresponds be highly successful in generating broad pub- TED Talk. Our fascination with pre-packaged to Jimenez’s suggestions. lic support. This is because they draw on the solutions and our short attention spans are self- serving guilt trips that lead many people incompatible with appreciation for true com- to believe that their privileged position has plexity, humility and unpredictability. invested them with the burden and the respon- If you feel invested in a cause, engage it with sibility to save those less fortunate from their all your passion, but tread carefully. Ask yourself plight. Celebrity activists provide us with a pow- why you even care about this conflict in the first erful outlet for our guilty consciences and our place? Whose voices are you listening to about it? self-serving views of history. What better way Whose interests are they serving? What is already to liberate ourselves from this burden than by being tried by local actors on the ground? And, most taking up a global cause in a faraway land, and importantly, why should you become involved? who better to show us the way to do it than our If you do decide to take that leap, then start favorite celebrities? by listening rather than preaching, facilitating TEACHING IDEA My experience working with armed conflicts rather than commanding, cooperating rather Students can debate the article’s and humanitarian crises has shown me the than defeating, creating organically rather than effectiveness at supporting the disastrous effects that such views tend to have planning mechanically, and seeking to unsettle claim made in its title. They may on the ground. Away from the fantasy world of the status quo rather than trying to control it in find the lack of concrete evidence easy-to-understand, black-and-white, single-story its entirety. Being told that you have an urgent problematic, or they may find the views of a conflict lays a world of complexity, responsibility to act in order to help solve a central premise persuasive. depth and uncertainty. With the embrace of com- conflict that you hardly even knew existed in Jimenez’s reference to a “slippery plexity we are able to discover that the way we the first place is the first step down a slippery slope” in the final paragraph also seek to approach and work within a conflict must slope of continuous despair, wasted goodwill opens the door for a review of be incredibly flexible and diverse. and neo-colonialism. that logical fallacy.

QUESTIONS

1. According to Andres Jimenez, what fuels 3. How, according to Jimenez, do celebrity activists “celebrity-fueled, do-good awareness campaigns” generate broad support for their efforts? Why (para. 3)? does Jimenez think the effects of those efforts are 2. What is Jimenez’s view of celebrities like Bono, “disastrous . . . on the ground” (para. 8)? Does he George Clooney, Madonna, and Oprah Winfrey see any upside? Explain your answer. taking up causes such as debt cancelation, the 4. What does Jimenez consider to be the basic increase in foreign aid, and others? What do requirements for working with humanitarian or people generally criticize about these efforts? conflict crises? To what extent do you agree?

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CLOSE READING CLOSE READING The first sentence of paragraph 7 Students could analyze the effec- seems to be a concession, but tiveness of paragraph 8. Would it the paragraph quickly under- benefit from specific examples, mines it when it refers to and, if so, of what? Or, are “self-serving guilt trips.” Students Jimenez’s generalizations could analyze the function of the persuasive enough as is? paragraph within Jimenez’s larger argument.

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TRM VOCABULARY Popular Culture Jim Carrey, Please Shut Up about Vaccines A vocabulary exercise based on 5 challenging words from this read- JEFFREY KLUGER ing can be found on the Teacher’s Jeffrey Kluger is a science writer and editor at large for Time magazine, which published Resource Flash Drive. the following column in 2015.

TB MULTIPLE ay this for the anti-vax clown car: it never mercury in thimerosol [sic] is no risk. Make CHOICE Sseems to run out of new punchinellos to sense?” Which was followed by: ® For an AP -style multiple-choice climb inside. If it’s not scientific fabulist Andrew “I am not anti-vaccine. I am anti-thimerosal, question set on a passage from Wakefield, he of the fraudulent study that got the anti-mercury. They have taken some of the mer- this reading, see the The whole vaccine-autism myth started, it’s Jenny cury laden thimerosal out of vaccines. NOT ALL!” Language of Composition, Third McCarthy, she of the supposedly vaccine- And there was more too, but really, it doesn’t Edition Test Bank, which is both injured son whose autism was cured in part matter. Never mind that Carrey does not under- available in ExamView format and by — yes! — a gluten-free diet because, um, gluten stand the difference between ethylmercury and integrated into the e-book. is bad, very bad. methylmercury or the fact that there is virtually After McCarthy, there was Saturday Night no mercury of any kind left in vaccines. Never TEACHING IDEA Live alum Rob Schneider — because when you’re mind that he doesn’t seem to know that to the To establish — and have fun looking for guidance on the wisdom of vaccines, extent that aluminum is in vaccines at all, it is with — Kluger’s tone, you might who are you going to trust: the World Health there only as an adjuvant — or immune system read aloud the first two para- Organization, the Centers for Disease Control stimulant — and is well-handled by the body, graphs, and then ask students to and the National Institutes of Health, or the especially in the trace amounts that it’s found describe his tone in three or more man who gave us Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigolo? I in vaccines. And never mind too that if you’re phrases or adjectives. “Strident” mean, hello, the movie was huge. going for the ad hominem attack — a staple of is a good one (as used in the first anti-vaxxers — calling a man like Jerry Brown, study question), but humor is ◆ ◆ ◆ better known as Governor Moonbeam, a “fascist” there too. Have them analyze Now, to this group of board-certified jesters add is a bit wide of the argumentative mark. how he creates the tone and why Jim Carrey — the ex-Mr. Jenny McCarthy — who The anti-vax crowd has never been about rea- it is effective for his subject rose on July 1 in all his orange-wigged, flop- soned argument or a cool-headed look at clinical matter and audience. py-shoed, seltzer-down-the-pants fury to condemn science. They’ve been all about rage, all about California Governor Jerry Brown for the high crime echo-chamber misinformation. For every sensible TEACHING IDEA of common sense, after Brown signed a law that action to boost vaccination rates, they have long Much of Kluger’s argument requires virtually all kids in the state to be fully been there, like a sort of perverse bit of Newtonian hinges on the consideration of vaccinated as a pre- condition for attending public physics, with an equal and risible reaction. ethos, as he establishes in the school. Carrey took — no surprise — to Twitter to Maybe that’s the reason they roll out pratfall first two paragraphs. You could air his peer-reviewed views. comics like Schneider and Carrey to plead their have students identify in the rest “California Gov says yes to poisoning more case — a bit of misdirection to hide the tragicomedy of the article other references to children with mercury and aluminum in man- of their message behind the larger comedy of the the ethos of the sources of infor- ditory [sic] vaccines. This corporate fascist must messenger. Or maybe they’re the best they’ve got. mation about vaccines. You could be stopped,” said the erstwhile Ace Ventura, Pet That matters. A movement that begins with also have them consider Kluger’s 10 Detective. That was followed by: a study conducted by a doctor so thoroughly own ethos. “They say mercury in fish is dangerous but 5 discredited that he’s not even allowed to practice forcing all of our children to be injected with medicine in his native United Kingdom anymore

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CLOSE READING CHECK FOR Students could analyze how UNDERSTANDING paragraph 7 contributes to Kluger’s reference to “the ad Kluger’s ethos and how it shifts hominem attack” in paragraph 7 the tone. opens the door for a review of that logical fallacy. You could also explore why Kluger’s criticism of Jim Carrey is not an ad hominem attack.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 376 22/03/18 11:58 AM (Wakefield) and takes flight thanks to the prat- cost — sick children, lost school days, outbreaks Falisse tlings of a Playboy model and talk show guest of diseases like measles, mumps and whooping (McCarthy) ought not to have a chance against cough — has gotten too high. the informed scientific opinion of virtually every Like all fringe groups eventually do, the Who Really Benefits from Celebrity Activism? CLOSE READING medical group on Earth. That it does says some- anti-vaxxers are now entering their rump- Students might analyze the thing about the hucksters’ ability to sell their faction stage, dwindling to an angry, dense, diction in the final paragraph to nonsense and the human tendency to pay more immune-to-reason core. Soon enough, they’ll connect it to Kluger’s purpose. attention to famous but wrong-headed people be gone. The likes of Carrey — today’s foghorn, The paragraph includes words than to unglamorous but smart ones. tomorrow’s footnote — will vanish with them. they might need to look up But that’s finally changing. The anti-vax act And America’s children — not for nothing — will (“rump-faction”) and puns has at last gotten old, and it’s gotten tired and the be better for it. (“immune-to-reason”).

QUESTIONS

1. Jeffrey Kluger’s views on vaccines are clear from 3. Why is Kluger optimistic that the “anti-vax act the very first sentence of this piece. How does has at last gotten old” (para. 11)? Do you agree? he establish credibility despite the strident tone and Explain your answer. one-sided nature of the views he presents? 2. How does Kluger characterize the “anti-vax” crowd? What does he consider the “tragicomedy” (para. 9) of the anti-vaccine movement?

TRM VOCABULARY Who Really Benefits from Celebrity Activism? 6 A vocabulary exercise based on GEORGIA COLE, BEN RADLEY, AND JEAN-BENOÎT FALISSE challenging words from this reading can be found on the Teacher’s The following article, published in the Guardian in 2015, was written by researchers focused Resource Flash Drive. on African politics and economic development. TB MULTIPLE rom George Clooney’s Enough Project, rap- Leopold of Belgium’s violent and autocratic rule CHOICE per Akon’s newly launched Lighting Africa to of the Congo Free State. They did so with the help F For an AP®-style multiple-choice the viral Kony 2012 campaign, there’s no doubt of notable friends: writers Arthur Conan Doyle question set on a passage from celebrity activism has gone mainstream. and Joseph Conrad, and chocolate magnate this reading, see the The Mother Jones recently published an ironic William Cadbury. Language of Composition, Third map of the African countries celebrities have Between the 1930s and 1950s, suffragette Edition Test Bank, which is both “claimed” through their charity work: Richard Sylvia Pankhurst fought for a fascist-free, and available in ExamView format and Branson, Oprah and Will Smith have South later independent, Ethiopia, and a few decades integrated into the e-book. Africa, while Botswana is Kim Kardashian’s. later Bob Geldof and Band Aid raised £30m for But this kind of celebrity advocacy isn’t new, the victims of the country’s famine. either. At the turn of the 20th century, the prom- The latest generation of American celebrity 5 inent British journalist, author and politician activists has most commonly knocked at the Edmund Dene Morel and Anglo-Irish diplomat doors of western governments, demanding Roger Casement successfully challenged King changes in policy towards their chosen cause

The Value of Celebrity Activism CONVERSATION 377

BUILDING CONTEXT You could note that the map mentioned in paragraph 2 is the Gilson illustration text (“Dr. Clooney, I Presume?” [p. 371]), included in this Conversation.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 377 22/03/18 11:58 AM 6 célèbre. But what are the consequences, and is With de facto international boycotts on min- CLOSE READING Popular Culture this something we necessarily want to promote? erals from the DRC, and a government ban on Students could analyze the artisanal mining, tens of thousands of miners and purpose of the successive rhetor- Just Causes vs Personal Brands businesses ended up unable to make a living. This ical questions at the end of para- Should we question the motives of celebrities who pushed many individuals either towards the illicit graph 5 and the beginning of hire expensive PR experts to “sell” their convic- mining industry or a rebel group, paradoxically paragraph 6. tions? As Daniel Drezner writes in “When foreign exacerbating the very violence it set out to reduce. policy goes glam,” engaging in humanitarian causes So what went wrong? In an article for the TEACHING IDEA clearly benefits the Clooneys, Jolies, and Damons World Peace Foundation, writer Alex de Waal The authors refer to several of the world. It provides them with access to new says there are fundamental pillars of activism outside sources to develop their outlets — political talk shows or international which should always be followed, most of all, the argument. You might ask forums — and helps polish their personal brands. act of responding to and collaborating with local students to discuss the effective- Causes are to celebrities what corporate social people, rather than imposing outside agendas. ness and purpose of the use of responsibility is to business — every established The Dodd-Frank campaign should have 15 secondary sources. Students can name has to have at least one. involved asking local activists, populations and also evaluate them as models for And while celebrities undoubtedly help mining experts in the eastern DRC about mineral synthesizing sources in their own bring serious issues to a larger audience — often supply chains, he writes, to check whether they writing. encouraging pledges from governments, policy- could be altered to improve the situation. makers and businesses — the problem lies in that De Waal also argues that activism should they are much less effective at transforming all speak to power, but also stand firmly against this into appropriate, tangible policies. it, and should not presume that all change is Academic Darrel West suggests that the possible from within. fascination for celebrities raises the risk that “there will be more superficiality and less A Simple, Catch All, Solution? substance in our political process.” As recent research has shown, the problem with A stark example of this is provided in the 10 celebrity causes is that they tend to de-politicise new documentary, We Will Win Peace, which activism. They too often obscure the complex tracks the impact of Section 1502 of the US’s dynamics of power and socioeconomic relations Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer in favour of a simple, catch all, solution. Protection Act. Celebrities speaking truth to power, rather Introduced in 2010 and championed by than half-truths that may inadvertently serve the celebrities from Ben Affleck to Nicole Richie, interests of power, may be a more promising way the ruling required companies to disclose forward if celebrity advocacy is to lead to mean- their use of conflict minerals originating in ingful socioeconomic change. the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an The advocacy circuit for change in Africa lacks adjoining country. celebrity participation in bottom-up movements, It was presented by the Enough Project as as opposed to top-down campaigns. an essential precursor to preventing conflict and Yet if the cycle of simplified celebrity 20 sexual violence in the DRC. But the new doc- messages leading to ineffective — even harmful umentary, alongside other pieces of research, — African policy is to be broken, genuine engage- shows the very real and devastating effect of this ment with, and commitment to, the people they simplified rendering of the facts. advocate on behalf of is critical.

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CHECK FOR CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING UNDERSTANDING Have students define fully the You might have students explore “fundamental pillars of activism” the meanings of “de-politicise” in (para. 14), since it is central to the paragraph 17. What do the rest of the argument. authors suggest is the relationship between celebrity activism and political action?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 378 22/03/18 11:58 AM Ostroff QUESTIONS TEACHING IDEA Ask students to choose a celeb- 1. Why do you think the Georgia Cole, Ben Radley, 4. What do the authors consider to be the and Jean-Benoît Falisse discuss the history of “fundamental pillars of activism” (para. 14)? Beyoncé and Why Celebrity Activists Matter rity cause in Africa — perhaps from the ones mentioned in the celebrity involvement with social causes? How 5. What do you think is the difference between does this approach serve their main argument? “bottom-up movements” and “top-down article or in the Gilson illustration 2. Who do the authors suggest benefits from celebrity campaigns” (para. 19)? What attitude do the (p. 371) — and have them create a involvement? authors take toward each? list of purposeful steps that a 3. What are some of the negative consequences of celebrity could follow to fulfill this celebrity involvement cited in this article? How article’s recommendations. convincing are these examples?

Beyoncé and Why Celebrity Activists Matter TRM VOCABULARY 7 A vocabulary exercise based on JOSHUA OSTROFF challenging words from this read- The piece that follows was written by Joshua Ostroff, a senior editor at HuffPost Canada, in ing can be found on the Teacher’s 2016 for HuffPost’s blog. Resource Flash Drive.

TB MULTIPLE rom the moment Beyoncé walked off the she thinks about any serious issue confronting CHOICE Super Bowl stage, halftime show stick- our nation.” F For an AP®-style multiple-choice ing out of her back pocket after broadcasting Even Toronto city councilor Jim Karygiannis 5 black power imagery and black pride lyrics joined the attack, calling her performance “dis- question set on a passage from this reading, see the The to an audience of 112 million people, the turbing” and wondering if “perhaps Immigration Language of Composition, Third backlash began. Minister John McCallum should have her investi- Edition Test Bank, which is both Actually, it took off on Twitter even before- gated first?” before she’s allowed to tour here. available in ExamView format and hand with a #BoycottBeyonce hashtag response And on February 16 there is a planned integrated into the e-book. to the powerful imagery of her new music video, anti-Beyonce protest in front of NFL headquarters: “Formation,” released the day before the Super “Are you offended as an American that Bowl. It features a boy in a hoodie dancing in Beyoncé pulled her race-baiting stunt at the front of riot cops, “Stop shooting us!” graffiti and Superbowl? Do you agree that it was a slap in the Beyonce atop a New Orleans cop car sinking in face to law enforcement? Come and let’s stand Katrina floodwaters. together. Let’s tell the NFL we don’t want hate But the halftime performance pushed it into speech & racism at the Superbowl ever again!” overdrive. “I thought it was really outrageous that The goal here is to intimidate the pop star she used it as a platform to attack police officers,” into silence because she holds power. fumed former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani It’s not the first time she’s caused a stir on a on Fox News. “You’re talking to Middle America big stage. Remember this [see photograph on when you have the Super Bowl.” p. 380]?

Congressman Peter King chimed in on Now celebrity activists are an easy target. 10 Facebook that “Beyoncé may be a gifted Who doesn’t like a good joke about Bono’s latest entertainer but no one should really care what Jesus Christ pose, cringe when they hear “Do

The Value of Celebrity Activism CONVERSATION 379

BUILDING CONTEXT CLOSE READING You could show students Students could examine the Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime Beyoncé backlash comments in performance and/or her video for paragraphs 4–8 and analyze the “Formation” (see also the Visual extent to which they criticize the Texts section, p. 363) and ask message as opposed to the them to analyze the rhetoric. context of its delivery (of the Super Bowl). Then, ask students if they agree with any of the arguments, and why.

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Michael Buckner/Getty Images

They Know It’s Christmas?” or just generally FBI and nearly deported. Professor Jon Weiner gripe about our celeb-obsessed culture? explained why to NPR: But here’s the thing; celebrity activists matter. CLOSE READING “ e ‘72 election was going to be the rst in Being an artist does not mean that you cannot speak You might have students analyze which 18-year olds had the right to vote. Before out about injustice, but critics push that agenda the balance of claims and conces- that you had to be 21. Everybody knew that young because having a following for your art does mean sions in paragraphs 11–13, and people were the strongest anti-war constituency, that people might actually listen when you do. then evaluate the effectiveness of so the question was, for Lennon, how could he Ostroff’s method. Sure, it doesn’t compare to street-level use his power as a celebrity to get young people activists like Black Lives Matter leader DeRay into the political process? And also, this is a time Mckesson, but it’s a different job, it’s about when kids are very alienated from, you know, raising awareness, speaking truth to power and mainstream politics. So to get Lennon out of the using cultural influence to point people toward a country, the strategic countermeasure is to deport Lennon so he won’t be able to take this tour that cause, movement or idea. would register young voters.” Consider the power of peak-era Public

Enemy — which Chuck D has dubbed the group’s Further back we had Muhammad Ali going 15 “war years” — as they reached kids from the to jail because he refused to fight in Vietnam: streets to suburbs with agit-raps about police “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform brutality, 911 failing the black community, fight- and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs ing the power and the establishment’s “Fear of a and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while Black Planet.” so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated Or let’s go further back to John Lennon, like dogs and denied simple human rights? I ain’t whose antiwar activism had him surveilled by the got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”

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BUILDING CONTEXT CHECK FOR You could show students, or have UNDERSTANDING them research, examples of these Ostroff provides historical exam- celebrity activist actions (by ples in reverse chronological Public Enemy, John Lennon, order in paragraphs 14–22. You Muhammad Ali, Harry Belafonte, could discuss why that might be and others mentioned in para- an effective organizational graphs 14–22). To go deeper, they choice, especially considering could research contemporary Ostroff’s audience. responses to those celebrities: What backlash did they receive? What, if any, effects did the celebrities have on the issue?

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 380 22/03/18 11:59 AM Back further still to the 1950s, Harry Belafonte Critics of celebrity activists feel these famous Ostroff used money from hits like the “Banana Boat folks should “shut up and sing,” as argued in Song” to help bankroll the civil rights movement the 2003 book by conservative radio host Laura and his fame to help bring people and media Ingram, a title co-opted by the Dixie Chicks for Beyoncé and Why Celebrity Activists Matter out to rallies and marches. He was blacklisted a doc about that time they got death threats and by McCarthy for his efforts. If there had been an banned from country radio for opposing the old-timey Twitter no doubt #BoycottBelafonte Iraq War. would have been trending. These same critics, of course, seem to have CLOSE READING Belafonte also organized “We Are The no problem at all with billionaires or corpora- Ostroff points out a seeming World” back in 1985, the same year that Willie tions using their financial influence to affect the contradiction in paragraph 22. You Nelson founded Farm Aid with Neil Young and political process. could ask students to assess this John Mellencamp, which has since raised over But back to Beyoncé (who, by the way, claim: Is Ostroff’s parallel between $50 million to help farmers. has with her husband Jay Z been bailing BLM celebrity activists and corporate George Clooney and celeb friends Don protesters out of jail and donated $1.5 million donations in politics valid? Cheadle, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt founded Not from their streaming service Tidal). on Our Watch, a human rights advocacy group The reason why her video and halftime CLOSE READING “drawing upon the voices of cultural leaders to show are important, and why similar efforts You might ask students to identify protect and assist the vulnerable, marginalized, by celebrity activists over the decades have the assumptions embedded and displaced.” mattered, is because they can leverage their within paragraph 24, and then to Pitt’s better half, Angelina Jolie, has long fame to help sway public opinion, which is key assess the effectiveness of the used her celebrity to draw attention to the to changing public policy. Sure, some celebs argument. plight of the dispossessed which led to her may be cynically building personal brands, but if being named a Special Envoy for the United they are educated and dedicated they can inspire Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. people to look deeper, to do research, to get Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo have also involved and affect change.

worked hard to raise awareness and money for Or as Jessica Williams said in her spirited 25 environmental causes. “Daily Show” defense: “The point is Beyoncé is

Rapper Killer Mike has helped boost Black 20 black and this is her message. It’s what artists do.” Lives Matter and Bernie Sanders, Canadian Oh, and if that doesn’t convince you, actress Ellen Page took on Ted Cruz over LGBTQ wouldn’t you rather have the Kanye that blurted issues with a Vice camera crew in tow and “Harry out “George Bush doesn’t care about black Potter” star Emma Watson changed minds with people” back? her viral gender equality speech at the UN and “He for She” campaign.

QUESTIONS

1. How does Joshua Ostroff consider his audience 3. What are the historical examples Ostroff cites? when he shares comments made by former New How do they help him make his argument? York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Congressman Peter 4. Why does Ostroff think celebrity activism matters? King, and Toronto city council mayor Jim Karygiannis Do you find his argument convincing? Explain your about Beyoncé’s performance at the Super Bowl? response. 2. Why does Ostroff suggest that celebrity activists are sometimes pushed into silence?

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TB MULTIPLE CHOICE or the past few months, the sports media We know, for example, that Jackie Robinson ® For an AP -style multiple-choice has been embroiled in a fight over “stick broke baseball’s color line, stole home and wore question set on a passage from F to sports.” The phrase comes from a common 42 on his back. Muhammad Ali championed this reading, see the The online rebuke directed at sportswriters and equality and said some funny stuff to Howard Language of Composition, Third pundits and players and coaches and anyone in Cosell. Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. Their Edition Test Bank, which is both the world of sports, really, who takes a political lionization reassures us that the stands they available in ExamView format and stance on anything that doesn’t occur on a field took were good — and can now be consigned to integrated into the e-book. or a court or in a locker room or front office. bygone eras. The dividing line is predictable: Many jocks and But the latest intrusion of political talk into CLOSE READING traditionalists argue for a separation of church sports — whether you deem it excessive or wel- The essay’s second sentence and state; many young fans say that sports, just come — has had a drastic effect on coverage. It offers a quick opportunity to like everything else, is politics. But as the sports has brought with it a currency and immediacy analyze the rhetorical effect of media critic Bryan Curtis has pointed out in The that we haven’t seen since the ‘60s and early ‘70s, polysyndeton. Ringer, the debate is mostly moot now: Trump’s when athletes like Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul- presidency, with its daily explosions, has made Jabbar and Curt Flood openly talked about CLOSE READING it impossible to cover pro sports, even in the civil rights. The day the White House declared The phrase “selective editing and simplest box score ways, without detouring onto its immigration and travel ban in January, the legacy building” (para. 2) merits the White House lawn. This comes, in part, from Milwaukee Bucks played the Toronto Raptors in exploration. Students could the way basic sports coverage works. Reporters Canada, and there was some concern that the analyze how those terms apply to ask questions before and after every game, and Bucks’ rookie center, Thon Maker, would not be the examples in that paragraph. when the only thing anyone wants to talk about let back into the United States after the game: Why are these “safe” options for is Trump, some of those questions will be about Maker is a citizen of Australia, but his family emi- politics in sports? the president. grated there from Sudan. The day after the game, In the past, a paradoxical yet symbiotic Alex Lasry, a Bucks executive and the son of one relationship generally characterized whatever of the team’s owners, tweeted: “I appreciate all relationship existed between sports and politics. the fans’ concerns and prayers for Thon. And The big American leagues, especially the N.F.L. today a Sudanese refugee who fled oppression and Major League Baseball, gave every indi- and is an incredible young man will make his sec- cation of wanting to distance themselves from ond N.B.A. start. I’m incredibly excited and proud partisan frictions. They typically prefer to honor of him. He’s a symbol of what makes America troops, fly fighter jets over stadiums and hold great and all immigrants believe about America.” moments of silence to honor the victims of trag- Maker was directly affected by Trump’s poli- edies. When they tackle overtly political issues, cies (though he re entered the United States with- it’s through selective editing and legacy build- out problem), and his teammates, fellow players ing. The settled politics of the past, where details and coaches in the N.B.A. publicized their sup- can be kept few and the tone nostalgic, are fine. port. This was not surprising, given the N.B.A.’s

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CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING To help students understand one of Kang’s central premises, you could ask them to analyze how the story of Thon Maker in paragraphs 3–4 answers the question posed in the article’s title.

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 382 22/03/18 11:59 AM Kang wealth of international players and its cosmo- league’s reigning Rookie of the Year, attended the politan fan base; in recent years, the league has airport protest at LAX.

encouraged its stars to speak out on matters Stephen Curry, arguably the world’s most Should Athletes Stick to Sports? important to them. More unexpected was the popular basketball player, may be following the Super Bowl’s inability to avoid the fray. During W.N.B.A. lead. After the chief executive of Under this year’s prime time media day, usually a hollow Armour recently referred to Trump as a “great parading of the players before the microphones asset” for the country, Curry, whose endorse- and cameras, Tom Brady’s continued refusal to ment deal with the company runs through 2024, talk about his presidential friend was big news. said, “There is no amount of money, there is no Brady had been ignoring these questions for platform I wouldn’t jump off, if it wasn’t in line almost a year and a half now, ever since reporters with who I am.” Perhaps more than any other saw a red “Make America Great Again” hat in his N.B.A. star lately, Curry has tended to project a locker, but he finally gave in. All he could muster charming blandness, but in putting his sponsor- was: “What’s going on in the world? I haven’t ships and money at risk — however improbable paid much attention. I’m just a positive person.” the prospect of his losing any — he went further Brady’s hamhanded elisions were hardly sur- 5 than most outspoken athletes. prising — he, perhaps more than any athlete since In the week following the Super Bowl, at Tiger Woods, has doggedly confronted us with his least six Patriots players — including Martellus right to never publicly say anything interesting Bennett and Devin McCourty, who earlier in to anyone. But the fact that his act hasn’t quite the season raised fists in solidarity with Colin kept the inquisitors at bay suggests that the days Kaepernick’s national-anthem protest — said of Woods, Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan just they would not make the traditional vic- grinning through any edgy conversation are over, tory visit to the White House. (Brady went to at least for now. Athletes, especially famous ones, Washington after his first three champion- are less likely to be left to stand alone as ciphers of ships, when George W. Bush was president, sporting excellence. Their images will be shaded but skipped the fourth trip during the Obama by their politics, even if these have to be assigned presidency.) “I was a black man yesterday, and to them. And as players continue to be asked I’m going to be a black man tomorrow,” Bennett about their political beliefs by reporters — espe- tweeted in response to the predictable storm cially as the international players in basketball his announcement kicked up from the “stick and baseball are prompted to talk about immigra- to sports” crowd. “My wife and daughter are tion — they have an opportunity to give voice to women today and will be women tomorrow.” resistance. If they want a model, they should look The Patriots absent from the White House photo toward the W.N.B.A., whose players have been op will be the most conspicuous part of what exemplifying thoughtful political expression. Last usually is a goofy, perfunctory moment in the summer, the W.N.B.A. fined several players for N.F.L.’s offseason, and reporters will reach out to wearing black T-shirts in support of Black Lives them for comment, which will provide another Matter at pregame practices; following the next occasion for criticism. game after the fine was announced, some players Those athletes who do speak out might find refused to discuss basketball, instead using the a curiously receptive ear in the White House. postgame news conference to talk about police Let’s remember that Trump, perhaps even more shootings. (The W.N.B.A. rescinded the fines than his basketball-obsessed predecessor, is soon after.) Last month, Breanna Stewart, the a sports fan. He owned a team in the United

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TEACHING IDEA CLOSE READING To help students recognize transi- Kang states that the WNBA can tions, you could have them provide a “model” of “thoughtful examine the long paragraph 5 political expression” (para. 5). and identify places to divide it How effectively does Kang’s into two or three smaller para- evidence support that claim? graphs. Then, ask them to explain the effect of Kang’s choice of one long paragraph.

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CHECK FOR Popular Culture handedly running the league into the ground); poor, inaccurate reflection of politics, but some- UNDERSTANDING he hosted fights at his Atlantic City casinos; he times elements of that imagery — the machismo, The essay’s last two sentences tried to buy the Buffalo Bills; he brags about his the posturing, the adoration of stars — align might challenge students. You friendship with Brady. Above all, he has shown a exactly. Jocks, if nothing else, know how to get might want to discuss as a class crippling sensitivity to the opinions of his fellow the president’s attention. what they add to Kang’s position on the relationship between athletes and activism. QUESTIONS

1. What does Jay Caspian Kang consider the dividing 4. Kang suggests that the days of uncommitted line between those who believe athletes and “ciphers of sporting excellence” are over and coaches should stick with sports and those who that politics may have to be “assigned to them” feel that “sports, just like everything else is politics” (para. 5). What does he mean by that, and how (para. 1)? Do you agree? Explain your answer. might that happen? 2. According to Kang, what is the traditional 5. What is your view of the relationship between “paradoxical yet symbiotic relationship” (para. 2) sports celebrities and political causes? between sports and politics? 3. What does Kang believe caused the fairly recent changes in the relationship between sports and politics?

MAKING CONNECTIONS 1. How does Jeffrey Kluger’s reference to “pratfall 4. How might Joshua Ostroff respond to Kluger’s comics like Schneider and Carrey” (para. 9) echo assertion that there is a “human tendency to pay C. Wright Mills’s discussion of why people listen to more attention to famous but wrong-headed even the lightest celebrities? people than to unglamorous but smart ones” 2. What similarities do you see between Mills’s take (para. 10)? on celebrities’ role in society and that expressed 5. Do you think Jay Caspian Kang would agree with in “Who Really Benefits from Celebrity Activism”? Ostroff’s views on celebrity activism? Do you think Are there any differences? Explain. Ostroff’s support for celebrity activism includes 3. Do you believe Andres Jimenez would approve of political commitment from athletes? Explain why the efforts of celebrities who worked to free the or why not. West Memphis Three? Why or why not?

ENTERING THE CONVERSATION As you respond to the following prompts, support your argument with references to at least three sources in this Conversation on the Value of Celebrity Activism. For help using sources, see Chapter 4.

1. Write an essay in which you take a stand on the World (1932) turned out to be more terrifyingly true value of celebrity in creating social change. than the vision George Orwell created in Nineteen 2. In the foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Eighty-Four (1949): media critic Neil Postman (1931–2003) suggests What Orwell feared were those who would that the vision of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New ban books. What Huxley feared was that there

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would be no one who wanted to read one. you believe celebrity activism has proven (or Entering the Conversation Orwell feared those who would deprive us of undermined) Postman’s argument. Refer to at least information. Huxley feared those who would three sources. give us so much that we would be reduced 3. In 2016, Chance the Rapper made a $1,000,000 to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that donation to the Chicago Public Schools. He said, the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley “It’s not my job to propose any policy or be behind feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of anything but the kids.” Using at least three sources irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become from this Conversation, write an essay in which a captive culture. Huxley feared we would you defend, challenge, or qualify Chance the become a trivial culture, preoccupied with Rapper’s assertion, examining the responsibility some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, of celebrities who work for social change. Should and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley they propose policy? Should they know the issues remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the thoroughly? Is money enough? civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever 4. Using the arguments and evidence in this on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take Conversation, answer the following question in an into account man’s almost infinite appetite for essay: Should celebrities use their influence and distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people power to work for social change, or should they are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave “just play ball”? New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

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from Hip Hop Planet ®

-STYLE MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS JAMES MCBRIDE

ou breathe in and breathe out a few times colonies, exhausted from being bottled up in Yand you are there. Eight hours and a housing projects for generations with no job wake-up shake on the flight from New York, prospects. They telegraphed the punch in their and you are on the tarmac in Dakar, Senegal. music — France is the second largest hip hop Welcome to Africa. The assignment: Find the market in the world — but the message was roots of hip hop. The music goes full circle. The ignored. Around the globe, rap music has become music comes home to Africa. That whole bit. a universal expression of outrage, its macho pose Instead it was the old reporter’s joke: You go out borrowed from commercial hip hop in the U.S. to cover a story and the story covers you. The In Dakar, where every kid is a microphone stench of poverty in my nostrils was so strong it and turntable away from squalor, and American pulled me to earth like a hundred-pound ring in rapper Tupac Shakur’s picture hangs in market my nose. Dakar’s Sandaga market is full of “local stalls of folks who don’t understand English, color” — unless you live there. It was packed and rap is king. There are hundreds of rap groups filthy, stalls full of new merchandise surrounded in Senegal today. French television crews troop by shattered pieces of life everywhere, broken in and out of Dakar’s nightclubs filming the pipes, bicycle handlebars, fruit flies, soda bottles, kora harp lute and tama talking drum with beggars, dogs, cell phones. A teenage beggar, his regularity. But beneath the drumming and the body malformed by polio, crawled by on hands dance lessons and the jingling sound of tour- and feet, like a spider. He said, “Hey brother, help ist change, there is a quiet rage, a desperate me.” When I looked into his eyes, they were a bot- fury among the Senegalese, some of whom tomless ocean. seem to bear an intense dislike of their former The Hotel Teranga is a fortress, packed colonial rulers. behind a concrete wall where beggars gather at “We know all about French history,” says 5 the front gate. The French tourists march past Abdou Ba, a Senegalese producer and musician. them, the women in high heels and stonewashed “We know about their kings, their castles, their jeans. They sidle through downtown Dakar art, their music. We know everything about them. like royalty, haggling in the market, swimming But they don’t know much about us.” in the hotel pool with their children, a scene Assane N’Diaye, 19, loves hip hop music. that resembles Birmingham, Alabama, in the Before he left his Senegalese village to work as 1950s — the blacks serving, the whites partying. a DJ in Dakar, he was a fisherman, just like his Five hundred yards (460 meters) away, Africans father, like his father’s father before him. Tall, eat off the sidewalk and sell peanuts for a pit- lean, with a muscular build and a handsome tance. There is a restlessness, a deep sense of chocolate face, Assane became a popular DJ, something gone wrong in the air. but the equipment he used was borrowed, and The French can’t smell it, even though when his friend took it back, success eluded they’ve had a mouthful back home. A good him. He has returned home to Toubab Dialaw, amount of the torching of Paris suburbs in about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Dakar, a October 2005 was courtesy of the children village marked by a huge boulder, perhaps 40 feet of immigrants from former French African (12 meters) high, facing the Atlantic Ocean. 386

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place. He was told by a white trader to come and deeper waters, the hardship of fishing for -Style Multiple-Choice Questions here, to Toubab Dialaw. When he arrived, the 8, 10, 14 days at a time in an open pirogue in slavers followed. A battle ensued. The ruler rainy season, the high fee they pay to rent the fought bravely but was killed. The villagers bur- boat, and the paltry price their catches fetch on ied him by the sea and marked his grave with a the market. They write about the humiliation of small stone, and over the years it is said to have poverty, watching their town sprout up around sprouted like a tree planted by God. It became them with rich Dakarians and richer French. And a huge, arching boulder that stares out to sea, they write about the relatives who leave in the protecting the village behind it. When the fisher- morning and never return, surrendered to the men went deep out to sea, the boulder was like a sea, sharks, and God. lighthouse that marked the way home. The Great The dream, of course, is to make a record. Rock of Toubab Dialaw is said to hold a magic They have their own demo, their own logo, and spirit, a spirit that Assane N’Diaye believes in. their own name, Salam T. D. (for Toubab Dialaw). In the shadow of the Great Rock, Assane has But rap music represents a deeper dream: a better built a small restaurant, Chez Las, decorated with life. “We want money to help our parents,” Assane hundreds of seashells. It is where he lives his says over dinner. “We watch our mothers boil hip hop dream. At night, he and his brother and water to cook and have nothing to put in the pot.” cousin stand by the Great Rock and face the sea. He fingers his food lightly. “Rap doesn’t 10 They meditate. They pray. Then they write rap belong to American culture,” he says. “It belongs lyrics that are worlds away from the bling-bling here. It has always existed here, because of our culture of today’s commercial hip hoppers. They pain and our hardships and our suffering.”

TRM MULTIPLE 1. The pattern of development in paragraph 1 can 3. McBride uses all of the following in this CHOICE best be described as passage EXCEPT For a handout of the AP®-style a. problem and solution a. figurative language multiple-choice questions on a b. cause and effect b. analogy passage from this reading, see c. narration c. a sentence fragment the Teacher’s Resource Flash d. definition d. expert testimony Drive. e. comparison and contrast e. objective reporting

2. What is the purpose of paragraphs 2 and 3? 4. The quote in paragraph 10 serves primarily to TRM ANSWER KEY a. defend McBride’s position that hip hop is I. to identify the historical context for the For an answer key with rationales appreciated throughout the world contemporary issue for this multiple-choice question b. criticize the negative impact of hip hop on set, see the Teacher’s Resource II. to introduce a counterargument to the main cultures outside the United States Flash Drive. idea c. support McBride’s thesis of hip hop’s African III. to qualify the author’s thesis with a specific origins example d. emphasize hip hop’s ability to unite people from different countries a. I only e. illustrate the reason people in former French b. I and II only African colonies continue to market hip hop c. III only d. I and III only e. I, II, and III 387

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from Corn-Pone Opinions

MARK TWAIN

ifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen a pretense — he did it with his mouth; exactly Fand helping to inhabit a Missourian village imitating the sound the bucksaw makes in on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend shrieking its way through the wood. But it served whose society was very dear to me because I was its purpose; it kept his master from coming out to forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He was see how the work was getting along. I listened to a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful the sermons from the open window of a lumber young black man — a slave — who daily preached room at the back of the house. One of his texts sermons from the top of his master’s woodpile, was this: with me for sole audience. He imitated the pulpit “You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, style of the several clergymen of the village, and en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.” did it well, and with fine passion and energy. I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed To me he was a wonder. I believed he was the upon me. By my mother. Not upon my mem- greatest orator in the United States and would ory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me some day be heard from. But it did not happen; while I was absorbed and not watching. The in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked. black philosopher’s idea was that a man is not It is the way, in this world. independent, and cannot afford views which He interrupted his preaching, now and might interfere with his bread and butter. If he then, to saw a stick of wood; but the sawing was would prosper, he must train with the majority; 388

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 388 22/03/18 11:59 AM 6 in matters of large moment, like politics and reli- to bow to that; there are no exceptions. Even the gion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his woman who refuses from first to last to wear the AP ®

neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing hoopskirt comes under that law and is its slave; -Style Multiple-Choice Questions and in his business prosperities. He must restrict she could not wear the skirt and have her own himself to corn-pone opinions — at least on the approval; and that she must have, she cannot surface. He must get his opinions from other help herself. But as a rule our self-approval has its people; he must reason out none for himself; he source in but one place and not elsewhere — the must have no first-hand views. approval of other people. A person of vast con- I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I 5 sequences can introduce any kind of novelty in think he did not go far enough. dress and the general world will presently adopt it — moved to do it, in the first place, by the 1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague majority view of his locality by calculation something recognized as authority, and in the and intention. This happens, but I think it is second place by the human instinct to train with not the rule. the multitude and have its approval. An empress 2. It was his idea that there is such a thing as a introduced the hoopskirt, and we know the first-hand opinion; an original opinion; an result. A nobody introduced the bloomer, and opinion which is coldly reasoned out in a we know the result. If Eve should come again, man’s head, by a searching analysis of the in her ripe renown, and reintroduce her quaint facts involved, with the heart unconsulted, styles — well, we know what would happen. And and the jury room closed against outside we should be cruelly embarrassed, along at first. influences. It may be that such an opinion has The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears. been born somewhere, at some time or other, Nobody reasons about it. One woman abandons but I suppose it got away before they could the fashion; her neighbor notices this and fol- catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum. lows her lead; this influences the next woman; I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and so on and so on, and presently the skirt has and independent verdict upon a fashion in vanished out of the world, no one knows how nor clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or why, nor cares, for that matter. It will come again, religion, or any other matter that is projected into by and by and in due course will go again. . . . the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare Men think they think upon great political thing — if it has indeed ever existed. questions, and they do; but they think with their A new thing in costume appears — the flaring party, not independently; they read its literature, hoopskirt, for example — and the passers-by are but not that of the other side; they arrive at con- shocked, and the irreverent laugh. Six months victions, but they are drawn from a partial view of later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has the matter in hand and are of no particular value. established itself; it is admired, now, and no They swarm with their party, they feel with their one laughs. Public opinion resented it before, party, they are happy in their party’s approval; public opinion accepts it now, and is happy in and where the party leads they will follow, it. Why? Was the resentment reasoned out? Was whether for right and honor, or through blood the acceptance reasoned out? No. The instinct and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals.

that moves to conformity did the work. It is our In our late canvass half of the nation pas- 10 nature to conform; it is a force which not many sionately believed that in silver lay salvation, can successfully resist. What is its seat? The the other half as passionately believed that that inborn requirement of self-approval. We all have way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth 389

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 389 22/03/18 11:59 AM 6 part of the people, on either side, had any ratio- I have deeply studied that question, too — and Popular Culture nal excuse for having an opinion about the mat- didn’t arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and ter at all? I studied that mighty question to the we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get bottom — came out empty. Half of our people an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its passionately believe in high tariff, the other half name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. believe otherwise. Does this mean study and It settles everything. Some think it the Voice examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. of God.

TRM MULTIPLE CHOICE 1. What is the primary rhetorical function of the 4. The term “corn-pone opinions” (para. 4) signifies For a handout of the AP®-style writer’s story about Jerry (paras. 1–4)? which of the following? multiple-choice questions on a a. to create a humorous beginning in order to a. ideas that reflect a person’s background and passage from this reading, see appeal to the reader’s emotions economic station in life the Teacher’s Resource Flash b. to contrast the writer’s childhood beliefs with b. ideas that are held because a person believes Drive. the ideas he developed during adulthood they will help him rise socially and economically c. to introduce the setting as a significant c. ideas that are based on a geographical component of the writer’s argument location, changing from one part of the TRM ANSWER KEY d. to establish the writer’s veracity through the country to another For an answer key with rationales history of his interest in the subject d. ideas that are based on a person’s need for for this multiple-choice question e. to provide an example that will be further self-approval and group approval set, see the Teacher’s Resource developed through later anecdotes e. ideas that are so old-fashioned they should be Flash Drive. 2. In paragraphs 1–3, the writer characterizes Jerry in put in a museum with other absurdities which of the following ways? 5. The numbered items in paragraph 5 serve to a. as a fascinating friend who was a productive a. enumerate Jerry’s points and offer further worker explanation of his claims b. as a philosopher who was influential in the b. create a shift from personal anecdote to writer’s hometown researched analysis of evidence c. as a role model who was appreciated by the c. undermine the author’s reliable persona writer’s mother created within the first four paragraphs d. as a preacher who was encouraged to pursue d. distinguish the writer’s experience-based his passion arguments from Jerry’s theory-based e. as a gifted speaker who illustrated his wiliness arguments in his work efforts e. refute a counterargument suggested by the 3. What literary technique is exemplified in the author’s mother in paragraph 4 following sentence from paragraph 3: “You tell me 6. As the passage progresses, the speaker’s focus whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what shifts from his ’pinions is”? a. a personal reflection establishing background a. dialect to an assertion of an abstract point b. alliteration b. a childhood anecdote to adult observations of c. onomatopoeia contemporary society d. allusion c. a concrete example to hypothetical situations e. apostrophe extending the original argument

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assertions ultimately lead to their own downfall AP ®

e. an expert opinion to supportive evidence from 9. All of the following statements contribute to the -Style Multiple-Choice Questions outside sources author’s argument EXCEPT 7. Paragraph 7 illustrates all of the following a. “But it served its purpose; it kept his master techniques EXCEPT from coming out to see how the work was a. rhetorical question getting along.” (para. 2) b. parallelism b. “Even the woman who refuses from first to last c. conditional statement to wear the hoopskirt comes under that law d. allusion and is its slave.” (para. 7) e. definition c. “[T]hey read its literature, but not that of the 8. The writer’s reference to Eve at the end of other side.” (para. 9) paragraph 7 serves to d. “Half of our people passionately believe in high tariff, the other half believe otherwise.” (para. 10) a. suggest that women are so conformist that e. “Some think it the Voice of God.” (para. 10) they would adopt nakedness as a fashion b. illustrate how women’s concern with 10. The writer’s attitude toward his subject can best be fashion goes back to the beginning described as of history a. sentimental appreciation c. intimate the sacred nature of female b. objective indifference accoutrements c. amused criticism d. offer an opposing example to the previous d. nostalgic condescension points about the empress and the “nobody” e. guarded sarcasm

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® For [#] AP -style essay prompts Now that you have examined a number of readings and other texts that focus on popular on the theme of popular culture, culture, explore one dimension of the topic by synthesizing your own ideas and the texts. You see the The Language of might want to do more research or use readings from other classes as you prepare for the Composition, Third Edition Test following projects. Bank, which is both available in ExamView format and integrated Following Beyoncé’s appearance at the 2016 culture exalts a quality that might be into the e-book. 1. Super Bowl and the release of her “Formation” called Moral Pluck — a combination of video, which takes on police violence against resourcefulness and transgression in the minorities, as well as female empowerment, service of basic but informal values. pundit Jessica Williams said in her spirited Consider the portrayals of professionals — in defense on The Daily Show, “The point is law, in medicine, in education — in popular Beyoncé is black and this is her message. It’s culture. Do you agree with Simon that the ethics what artists do.” Support, challenge, or qualify of popular culture are sometimes in conflict with Williams’s statement about the purpose of traditional ethics? Write an essay defending your artists’ messages. position on this question. 2. Read this statement from “Celebrity Bodies” 4. Each of the following statements addresses the by Daniel Harris and write an essay in which subject of media. Select one that interests you, you support, challenge, or qualify his assertion and write an essay that defends or challenges that we would be better off trying to be like the its assertion. To support your argument, refer celebrities we admire. to your own experience with media and to the Our fantasies engender a paralyzing selections in this chapter. awe that instills in us despair, a sense a. The one function TV news performs very well of hopelessness about maintaining is that when there is no news, we give it to our bodies, about achieving the buff you with the same emphasis as if there were. perfections of stars spoon-fed by studio — David Brinkley, American TV network dieticians who force them to nibble on news anchor rice cakes and celery sticks and submit b. Whoever controls the media — the to grueling regimens of Pilates and images — controls the culture. kickboxing. In fact, we would almost — Allen Ginsberg, poet certainly be healthier if we did imitate c. If you want to use television to teach Hollywood, if we did work out and somebody something, you have first to diet as compulsively as they do, if, like teach somebody how to use television. supermodel Dayle Haddon, we performed — Umberto ECO, philosopher leg lifts while washing the dishes, side d. Visual chaos is not good for anyone. bends while standing in line at Starbucks, Billboard companies should not be allowed and thigh resistance exercises in the to sell what they don’t own — our field of elevators of our four-star hotels. vision and our civic pride. 3. In a paper entitled “Moral Pluck: Ethics in Popular — Meg Maguire, president, Scenic America Culture,” Columbia Law School professor William 5. In his essay “High-School Confidential: H. Simon writes about the portrayal of lawyers in Notes on Teen Movies” (p. 322), David Denby film and television. He notes: suggests that the teen movies from the turn While elite moralism is strongly of this century reflect the secret wishes — and authoritarian and categorical, popular geekiness — of their screenwriters and

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter. Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution. 07_SHE_06918_ch06_0298_0393_pp1.indd 392 22/03/18 11:59 AM directors. Watch a movie about teens from an 8. Using Ray Bradbury’s “The Affluence of Despair” 6

earlier time — Rebel without a Cause (1955) or as a model, write an essay about the effect of Suggestions for Writing Splendor in the Grass (1961), for example — and the Internet on American society. discuss what the film said about the filmmakers 9. Consider a pairing in which one medium has been of the era. adapted into a new one — books and video games 6. In “Corn-Pone Opinions,” Mark Twain distinguishes made into movies, or movies made into live between fashion and standards. Is it the same as theater, for example. Write about how the remake the difference, discussed on page 313, between modified the original to suit the new medium and what was once considered popular culture and how the new medium honors the old. high culture? Write about what you see as the 10. Write a ballad about the Balloon Boy or about difference between fashion and standards. a viral story — true or not — that was quickly popularized online or in the news. 7. “Hip Hop Planet” by James McBride (p. 301) refers to several different genres of popular 11. Write a review of a concert, album, movie, or music. Listen to an assortment of songs by the graphic novel. Keep in mind that reviews are artists mentioned in his piece. Make a CD or arguments either applauding artists, criticizing create a playlist of the music, and write some them, or both. liner notes in which you explain why you chose the songs and how you decided on the order in which they appear.

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