Monday, 20 March 2017

Pop Culture Analysis First Blog

Mean Girls is a classic teen comedy film.  The screenplay was written by Tina Fey.  Her inspiration was the novel Queen Bees and Wannabes, written by Rosalind Wiseman.  The main character of the movie is named Cady Heron.  In the beginning of the movie, she is an innocent girl from Africa.  During her high school years, her family decides to move to the United States.  She begins to attend North Shore High school and is struck with culture shock.  She is forced to adapt to her new lifestyle as quickly as possible.  The most popular group in in the school is nicknamed the Plastics.  They take Cady under their wing.  Then, the ring leader of the group betrays Cady.  Cady makes it her goal to get revenge on her.
Tiny Fey’s purpose for writing Mean Girls was to show viewers how much a person can change depending on their surroundings.  Her audience is teenagers and parents.
In this paper, I will analyze the transformation of Cady.  I will also look at the difference between Cady’s parents and Regina’s parents, and the effects they had on their children.  To conduct my research, I will use the USC upstate library data bases.  I will try to find information about modern teenagers and compare it to the ones in the movie.
I choose to do my pop culture analysis on Mean Girls, because it is one of my favorite movies.  It also references many social issues in society.  Some of these issues include girl on girl crime and the morality of teenagers.

My claim for this assignment will be that Mean Girls accurately depicts teenage life.  My data is that in most high schools, there is a group of popular kids who practically run the school.  There are also multiple cliques that are defined by the similar interest of the people.  My warrant is that recent studies have shown the usual tendencies of high school students.  Most of them show that teenagers in Mean Girls and teenagers in real life are not that different.  Teenagers are easily influenced and guidance is essential to their development.  Some people could say that the movie is just a work of fiction and does not represent modern life at all.  While this could be partially true, it is difficult for a writer to write about something that they do not know about.  There had to be some background information for this movie to be made.

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Summary and Analysis Self Reflection

Writing a summary and analysis paper, was a new experience for me. In previous classes, most of my teachers expected me to retell the events of a text and give my opinion on it. They never really asked me to analyze the author’s techniques.  Through my summary and analysis paper on In Defense of a Liberal Education, I was able to look deeply at the author’s techniques.  I had to ask myself if the author did a good job conveying his message to the readers or not.  Did Zakaria motivate his readers to want to preserve the liberal arts? I looked for clues from chapter three of his text which is entitled “Learning to Think,” (Zakaria 72).  I analyzed his structure, diction, anecdotes, imagery, symbolism, and research to make my decision on whether Zakaria accomplished his goal.  After days of analyzing, I concluded that he did make an effective argument. His use of many different techniques helped to make a clear message for the reader.  His text was persuasive and effective. 
Once I decided that Zakaria accomplished his goal of motivating his readers, I began writing my paper. My teacher informed me that the essay should be about ten percent summary and ninety percent analysis.  Therefore, my first paragraph was a brief summary of In Defense of a Liberal Education.  My second paragraph was a summary of chapter three of the text.  Then, I began my analysis.  In the next three and a half pages, I talked about why I thought that Zakaria made an effective argument. I included direct quotes to back up my statements.  I included the quote, “I realized that coming from India, I was pretty good at taking test and regurgitating things I had memorized; I was not so good at expressing my own ideas” (Zakaria 73).  From this quote, I was able to make the connection between a liberal arts education and a skills based education.
Zakaria’s text accomplished the goal of trying to convince readers to preserve the liberal arts.  His stance on education was evident throughout the entire book.  His message was effective and persuasive.