Throughout this blogging experience, I have tampered with the mystic arts of rhetorical theory. Now, the time has come to pay the price for this tampering. I will be judged on my works, evil and good, and repaid with a numeric grade. This is my final defense.
The primary goal of this blog was to engage
rhetorical concepts. I proved my knowledge worthy of belief by incorporating
and describing complex, developed reasoning, possibly sacrificing the interest
of audiences uninitiated in the ways of rhetoric. Because of this, I tried to
limit these explanations to the minimum, just enough so that the concept could
still be understood. Sometimes this involved an easily-skipped, well-developed
theoretical paragraph, and sometimes it amounted to a brief name drop for the
sake of decorum.
While pretty much all of my posts fit snuggly into
nerd culture, I think the artifacts analyzed were still pretty diverse in
content, pulling from several different genres, therefore establishing myself,
the rhetor, as one who has knowledge in many fields, yet one with a distinctly
nerdy voice (or ideology? Maybe this blog is actually secretly all about
arguing for the Cult of the Nerd, and by reading its theories, one is drawn
further in until one cannot escape, and does not, in fact, realize that there
is even anything to escape from, thinking instead that this is just the way
life should be: wrapped in the false consciousness of comic books and spools of
film).
In order to propel the audience into the proper frame
of mind, I start each blog with a recognizable related to the artifact. This is
an attempt to pique the audience member’s interest, and if it is something they
care about, to get them to possibly understand the artifact the way I describe
it, even if they didn’t want to. In the fashion of many of the Great Blogs,
including The Bloggess, Tynan, and The Inky Fool, I try to incorporate an
abundance of interesting dynamic features like lists and pictures in my blog to
keep it interesting and unique, while also applying to blog conventions. I am
not the best layout person, but I keep it consistent at the very least and
stylish at the most. Another dynamic blog convention I included often was links
to other pages that might give background information about something I am
talking about to save space for more analysis. Links are enjoyable, as they are
the bane of productivity in the Internet age.
Looking at the blog through Kenneth Burke’s “frames
of acceptance,” which can be tragedy, comedy, or epic, I would at least halfheartedly
argue that each of these frames would fit this artifact. By discussing parts of
the heroic tales of such people as Spider-Man, Brandon Stanton, and our friend
the sloth, the audience of the blog may feel a sense of adventure and
invigoration from watching these individuals overcome hardship. The comic and /
or tragic frames will be more apparent after the blog is finally graded. Both
have been set up, as the heroes of this blog are all victims of fate.
Ultimately, this blog attempts to provide a method of transcendence, with which
this fate can be transcended and conquered. Tragedy and comedy are quite
similar, until the end, when tragedy ends in death and comedy ends in
marriages. Only once the blog is graded will fate determine whether it shall
end in tragedy or comedy.
If it is a comedy, dibs on marrying Spider-Man!
