While
brainstorming for WP3, I had a hard time thinking of a topic to even search for
my scholarly article. Then I decided to think about something that I love and
could somehow convey to both a younger and older audience: animals! I searched
dogs, cats, and finally just animals. Upon searching, I found an article
entitled “Animal Symbolism in Folk Narratives and
Human Attitudes towards Predators: An Analysis of their Mutual Influences.” At
first I did not think much of it, but after rereading the assignment, I realized
that this scholarly research piece had many possibilities. The paper focused
on:
“the
symbolic aspects of folk narratives involving animals considered to be
'harmful'. Its main focus is a study of narratives collected by Chilean
schoolchildren concerning eight endangered animal species. These narratives are
analysed as cultural models and as educational tools for environmental
purposes” (Benavides).
Simply the abstract description made me
consider the assignment. The scholarly article itself dealt with conventions,
not of a genre, but of a topic—which I had never even fathomed before. The
article focused on predispositions we have on animals based on aspects such as
their likelihood of being domesticated and social constructs that history has imposed
on us. Both children and adults are exposed to these predispositions or
“conventions” of animals, so translating the scholarly article would be simple.
I brainstormed some more and later remembered that the topics don’t exactly
need to be related, and while writing WP3 we have a tremendous amount of
freedom and room for self-expression. I tried to think outside the box in terms
of how to “transform” and “translate” the piece I selected into one suitable
for a younger audience. Since our discussion last week, I wanted to do
something that I could incorporate my art into. My first thought was a comic
book or a children’s book, but after reading the scholarly article I found I
felt that a good way to appeal to a younger audience would be a personality quiz.
The scholarly article continually illustrated the relationship between animals
and humans and how those relationships have affected the ways in which we see
animals, so a personality quiz seems like it would be a good way to describe
these relationships in a different way. For example, it could be something like
“what do you do on your free time? Which one of these 5 words would you most
likely use to describe yourself?” and if they chose “Being by myself” and
“Fierce” they could get a test result like “Wolf.” For a more mature audience I
was thinking of transforming my piece into a horoscope kind of deal, sort of
like “Your favorite animals and what they say about you.” It sounds childish
but I have seen so many of these on ADULT magazines. Most of the time these
personality quizzes I have seen on adult magazines are about alcohol, something
like “Your favorite cocktail and what it says about you,” or “Your drink of
choice and how your night will go based on that choice,” so I was thinking of
incorporating something like that into my work directed towards a more mature
audience.
I
am still unsure as to where I want to go with this and if I will even keep this
topic going but I would love to hear some feedback. Are any of you doing
anything similar and do you have any comments/suggestions/concerns? I would
like to see someone else’s approach on something similar to my idea.
Here is my scholarly article:
http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8c3115bd-d5e1-4ec4-9608-8311832c3749%40sessionmgr120&vid=11&hid=107
Your article sounds likes its awesome because animals are awesome. But more importantly, I think that your drawings are going to be amazing. You mentioned you want to do something that involved drawing, like a comic book, so maybe you could incorporate a drawing of an animal into the personality quiz? Like when the person receives their answer on what animal they're like, you can have a cool dragon pop up to help emphasize the point. I really, really like you idea of bringing in alcohol for your mature audience, because if there's one thing older people love, it's drinking. One thing that you could try that would be super cool would be maybe designing certain alcohol types for certain animals. Then you can have someone get an answer that not only has their favorite drink, but a super cool animals. Overall, I think you should stick with the quiz, but if I were you, I would try to incorporate art into it, since it seems like you are passionate about it.
ReplyDeleteI'm so jealous that you got to do animal's because I really wanted to do animal's but I couldn't find any articles that I liked. I think your quiz idea is great, it seems like something a lot of kids/teens get super into and it seems like you really want to do it. I'm kind of excited to see what you come up with because you're super creative and sound passionate about the quiz and art possibilities so I know it'll be great. As for the mature audience thing, you're headed in the right direction for sure. If you don't want to do a quiz, maybe you could do like an article you'd see in National Geographic about animal testing? If you wanted to do something geared toward animals for the older audience. Take a look at the list from the lesson plan that we all came up with and skim through the genres? Maybe something will jump out at you. Overall though I think you've got a solid foundation for your WP and I think it'll be great.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteGrecia I really liked your whole plan for Your WP3, It seems as if you have this thoroughly planned out. I really loved your whole idea of a comic book since I know you can draw really well. A horoscope? That’s a unique and really interesting idea; I would really like to see that play out. It’s a cool way to reach out to your older audience. You asked if anyone has a similar topic to yours, and well I kind of do. It’s really cool how you’re incorporating something you are really interested in, usually hints that your essay is going to flow really well. My topic is animals also and I was thinking since you asked for any advice, and I was thinking that maybe you could use some of your cool art inside your comic book. Overall I think it’s a really cool idea and going to be cool.
Grecia,
ReplyDeleteDamn, you chose an interesting and complex piece. I’m glad you went with animals, though—when I was a kid, I remember my mom telling me that you could tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals.
You seem to have put a lot of thought into what you could transform that piece into, and most importantly WHY. I like how you noted the scholarly piece: “continually illustrated the relationship between animals and humans and how those relationships have affected the ways in which we see animals, so a personality quiz seems like it would be a good way to describe these relationships in a different way”and used that as a basis to think about a personality test. That could certainly work. Some qs for you to think about are: who is designing this quiz and why? What are they hoping to accomplish by administering it, and are they going to do anything with the results? And where would it appear, and why there? These questions are just, hopefully, ways to help you think even more expansively about the (rhetorical) possibilities you’ve got.
I’m OK with you creating two quizzes/surveys—one to a younger audience and one to an older—as long as you can explain (good) reasons for doing so. As you noted, the language would certainly change and the content of the questions themselves (i.e., fave drink), but what else is changing? Would the older/adult quiz bring out a different piece of that original scholarly article? Would it capture the essence or big ideas in another way? If so, how?
Then again, you could go back to your initial idea of working in some of your artistic talents. Last night, I watched “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” a really badass documentary about street/countercultural/pop art. Could you do something more symbolic and less literal? When you visualize this piece, what do you visualize? If it were to make a statement, what statement would it make?
Could your transformed piece wind up in an art museum, complete with its own description with the title, a description of the piece, and a brief bio about the artist?
Z