Tag: Progymnasmata

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Phillip Wade Wilson

The Happiest Place on Earth – Impersonation

As I walk through the gates, I can already smell the scents being blasted onto Main Street USA. The confectionary shops, the sweet aroma, is drifting outside the park and into my nostrils filling me with the childlike wonder of going to the fair. It gives me this nostalgic feeling as if I’ve been here before, of course, I have as it’s my seventh time at Walt Disney World, but I mean it’s sending me to my younger memories, not of this place but others. As I scan my magic band and the mouse ears go from white to bright green, I’m able to enter.

The first thing I spot is these large mascots of famous Disney characters taking photos with all of the park guests. When I stop and think about it, it is so odd we know there are humans, most likely dripping in sweat because the heat index is near 100 degrees F today, inside of these costumes yet we are so excited to give them a hug and refer to them as if they were the real character. Not to mention those who pretend to be the princes and princesses who we can actually see, and while they do give a striking resemblance to the princes and princesses from the films it is still odd we put ourselves in this ‘Disney magic’ that should really be called ‘Disney make-believe’. Nonetheless, these characters, especially when they just pop into restaurants to take pictures with you while you eat, add an extra layer to how unique this theme park is to every other in the entire world.

I have never seen a large amount of trash, more than two ‘unhappy’ workers a day, or even felt unsafe while at the parks. The worst thing about them is the egregious lines that take up most of your day, and yet somehow, we are all ok with waiting 120 minutes for a five-minute ride… I can say in all honesty, I’ve waited in the same 120-minute line back to back. The sheer attention to detail that is present in these parks is my reasoning and my rationalization. While there is always construction going on or something being expanded, I just think about how much better it will be when I come back.

I tried impersonation here because I really the way David Wallace writes. He has this openness in his writing style through tone and diction that doesn’t hold back. He’s willing to tell every detail about something that occurred, even if it makes him look silly or strange. I enjoy the way he detailed his interactions (or lack thereof) with Petra and how he tried to see how they would know when to clean his room. I found this to be such a curious thing to do, but I see why he would do it because I too am fascinated by this process. Reading this part was what pushed me to try impersonation, I think I got some aspects of his writing, but it’s not fully realized yet. I attempted to compare his way of writing to one of the times I went to Walt Disney World two summers ago.

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Phillip Wade Wilson

Shipping Out – Encomium

In my 20 years alive I have been on, at least, 4 different cruise lines and 12 different cruise ships. I have never found something that explains the way a cruise ship feels better than the way David Wallace recounts his time aboard the Nadir. I found the way he compares a cruise, a vacation mode that much fewer people experience than the beach traveling to a different country, to feelings that nearly every person can associate with was a genius way to enable his readers to connect with his own feelings even though they might not have experienced themselves.

“A vacation is a respite from unpleasantness, and since consciousness of death and decay are unpleasant, it may seem weird that the ultimate American fantasy vacation involves being plunked down in an enormous primordial stew of death and decay.” (36)

In this quote, Wallace is comparing how he felt aboard to the feeling of vacations in general and the feeling of the ocean in general. Almost everyone knows how much they want their vacation to go perfectly and to have the most relaxing time because it is one’s time to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life, but as he states thinking about death and decay would not be the most relaxing time. While not everyone would associate the ocean with death and decay as he does, it is quite common for people to be afraid of ships in open waters (due to the sheer number of boating incidents and the dramatization of the Titanic in 1997 and now when people reference their disdain for boats in open waters they typically reference the Titanic film and not the actual sinking). This skillful comparison makes it much easier for the readers who have been on vacation and who have an opinion on the ocean to make the association he does; it is as if he is giving the foundational framework for his own perceptions so that the readers can rationalize the same way he rationalizes.

Another aspect I find that Wallace effortlessly employs is his, at times crass, humor that provides a very open feeling for readers. This open feeling, to me, drew me in closer and made me more excited to continue reading because his writing style, from metaphors to tone, created a diluted fear of missing out within me that made me want to read and not feel like it was a chore. I say this because many academic writings are filled with jargon and complexities that make reading them difficult and unenjoyable. I believe Wallace understood this as he was an English professor, and even noted something similar early on in this article, so he crafted this in a way that would instill the want to learn (or in this case the want to read). There are numerous jokes and anecdotal stories present throughout this piece, but these are even extended to the footnotes which only emphasize his topics within the main article.

“My sense was that Cheeriness was up there with Celerity and Servility on the clipboard evaluation sheets the Greek bosses were constantly filling out on the crew.”

This comical quote can be found within the 8th footnote on page 37 and exemplifies part of his writing style. While this refers to the satirical tone he has about the ways in which Celebrity Cruises posits the feelings the crew has, it pushes it further to make it clear to see the irony between what is in reality and what is constructed by the cruise line for their “fantasy-enablement”. I think Wallace uses this satirical connotation because of how insane it seems to him that passengers aboard truly do believe the advertisements and the feelings the cruise sells. His shock and awe are seemingly translated to his readers through this method and, in my opinion, brilliantly executed.

There are too many quotes for me to talk about that I enjoyed. There are too many areas for me to praise him within his writing, though personally I feel like labeling this as a “writing” does not do it justice. The way he unpacked his time onboard the Nadir changes this article into a story because the way he constructed it was through storytelling. His use of rhetoric is a way that I hope to achieve one day and I will be reading more of his work on my own; in all honesty, from this one article I think he may have surpassed Albert Camus as my favorite writer… but only time shall tell.

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Samuel James Conroy

Thesis Progymnasmata

Thesis Progymnasmata

            David Foster Wallace, one of the great American writers in recent times, produced a short collection of essays called, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” In this collection of essays was the writing, “Shipping Out,” a piece about Wallace’s experience on a cruise ship framed as an advertisement for said cruise ship. Wallace was not a fan of his cruise experience as it brought an odd feeling of despair.

Wallace presents a thesis, “There’s something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad” (Wallace). He by providing a list of all of the obligations that come with a seven-day cruise, such as,

“I have eaten more and classier food than I’ve ever eaten, and done this during a week when I’ve also learned the difference between “rolling” in heavy seas and “pitching” in heavy seas. I have heard a professional cruise-ship comedian tell folks, without irony, “But seriously” (Wallace).

Wallace immerses us into the life of the Nadir through this description, making us understand his discomfort and confusion.

Next, Wallace uses the advertising aspect to further push the you are obligated to have fun narrative. This advertising shows why the Nadir is so sad. Wallace states,

This is advertising (i.e., fantasy-enablement), but with a queerly authoritarian twist. Note the imperative use of the second person and a specificity out of detail that extends even to what you will say (you will say “I couldn’t agree more” and “Let’s do it all!”). You are, here, excused from even the work of constructing the fantasy, because the ads do it for you” (Wallace).

You simply do not have a choice on this cruise ship, you will need to have fun. It can be said that cruise ships truly are fun, and that Wallace’s experience is simply anecdotal. However, the overall concept of a cruise ship seems incredibly sad based on Wallace’s writing. Personally, I have never been on a cruise ship, but the thought of being in the middle of an ocean with no choice but to participate in the activities provided does seem gloomy. Overall, Wallace presents an interesting case about travel in general, one where everything seems artificial, even the place you are traveling. One where everything seems expensive rather than beautiful, and where the entire trip appears faux.

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Samuel James Conroy

Comparison Progymnasmata

            Frow’s writing, Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia, is a very intricate piece that goes into great deal about the different between a tourist and a traveler, as well as the minutiae of semiotics. This pleases me as in our previous reading by Culler, he also went into the differences between the two rather than lumping them together as one, which I had previously complained about.

Culler makes the distinction between the two based on how they perceive the culture of the country in which they are travelling to. The traveler will try his best to adapt to that culture and be there to experience what they have to offer. However, a tourist will want to experience what they believe to be the culture, aka a French guy speaking English with a French accent as opposed to just speaking French. Frow goes into more why the tourist is demonized. He provides a list of three moves:

  1. Criticism of tourism as inauthentic activity
    1. This is where the tourist is contrasted against the more heroic traveler and targeted as a cultural appropriator.
  2. The narrative of tourism is a much more complicated and ambivalent one
    1. A paradox is presented here as the tourist is valued positively as attempting to have an authentic experience, however in the post-industrial world this is not possible and ends up losing its authenticity.
  3. Follows from the internal condition of paradox progressively revealed in the playing out of the second
    1. A similar case to the second move, here authentic forms of travel are compared to inauthentic ones and an attempt to make a distinction is made.

This is a very complicated analysis yet makes a distinct point about the issue of authenticity. As with many things in modern times, travel has been done on just about every corner of the planet. Countries have established tourism divisions and the internet has made it possible to go just about everywhere. This makes me question, is authentic travel possible anymore? Everyone has been just about everywhere and done just about everything. In my opinion there may never be another authentic travel experience with the current connection the world has.

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Phillip Wade Wilson

Tourism and the Semiotics of Nostalgia – John Frow

Frow claims there are three main ways in which tourism is explained and can be understood as, the first pits the tourist against the traveler, the second establishes a positive narrative for the traveler in a postindustrial world, and the third compares authentic forms of tourism to those that are not and seeks to establish what is and is not authentic. In a previous reading by Culler, we noted that the way in which things are gives rise to consequences that shape how others view a specific thing. For instance, a fur coat is not simply a garment to keep one warm but rather a status symbol of fashion, wealth, and power that happens to additionally be a garment to keep one warm. In this reading by Frow, that same argument is extended and includes three main pieces being:

“inseparability of the object from its semiotic status”
“sheer impossibility of constructing otherness”
To construct a “good tourist object” one must “construct it as a plausible simulation of itself”

This can be seen everywhere in the travel industry as it is commonplace for travel advertisements to use an exclusivity ploy of “the real…” in order to draw in more people. Since tourists are looked down upon in the travel industry and travelers are pedestaled, many tourist information hubs now shift their focus from showing what “touristy” locations are available in a certain city, country, or area they emphasize living like a local. Nearly all travel sites encourage their users to get to know the place they are going “like a native” (or something of the like) because tourists are seen as a societal annoyance, but world travelers are seen with this aristocratic gloss. Frow writes about this paradoxical idea between traveler and tourist, and the outcomes this has on other areas of travel.

The portrayed authentic or real…. can be dreadful because it extends a false sense of what a place actually is without the person making up their own mind on what something is or is not. With so many external forces giving people preexisting notions on practically everything, from religion to government, when it comes time to make one’s mind up on something as simple as how a place one is visiting is conceived in one head thoughts blend together and a convoluted, and oftentimes incorrect, ideas. For example, when I was abroad in Spain, we had a native Spaniard give us a tour she said she would take us to all the local spots, but where we ended up was with a bunch of other tourists in the same spaces they were occupying. A similar occurrence happened in Belize; we were offered a local’s guide to one of the coastal cities, but it turned out to be just another tourist hotspot as all the other tours were on the same path. These ‘local guides’ promoted the already established ideas of the places they lived to newcomers with, most likely, no intention of upholding commonly held beliefs nonetheless they continued to exacerbate them. It seemed in these cases, where tourism was a heavy component of the economy, the mark of authenticity was a key component to continuing their touristic cycle and vastly beneficial to the local populations while being slightly misleading to the tourists themselves.

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Samuel James Conroy

Confirmation Progymnasmata

            Jonathan Culler puts out a very interesting piece regarding travelers versus tourists. I have read numerous pieces for this class thus far regarding tourism and the negatives surrounding it. So far, we have read about the appropriation of cultures through and the degradation of environments in certain countries due to overpacking tourists. However, I found myself disagreeing with many of the points suggested as I did not think all people traveled for the sole purpose of seeing the “big” tourist attractions. I argued in previous pieces how it was lazy to stereotype all tourists into one category as the ones who have no intention of learning the culture of the place, they travel to but rather see something, take a picture, and then leave. At my high school we used to have a spirit week where one of the days were tacky tourist day, this reminds me of slapping a stereotype on a group. Here is a picture for reference:

Culler does a good job and splits these two types of people, travelers and tourists.

Culler describes the difference in these two by talking about the semiotics of travel. Tourists are those who are not interested in what the culture has to offer but rather the idea of what their culture has to offer. Culler describes it perfectly, “The French chanteuse singing English with a French accent seems more charmingly French than one who simply sings in French” (Culler). These tourists are not interested in what France has to offer culturally, but rather what the perceived image of France has to offer, hence French people speaking English with French accents rather than actually speaking French. Then, the traveler is one who goes to various destinations for getting lost in that nation. As stated in the reading, “to drive through Roumania or Afghanistan without hotel reservations and to get by on terrible French” (Culler). Travel has become too much of becoming something you are not, such as traveling to a foreign country to become part of a social class that you are not part of back home or to simply take pictures of nice locations to brag about on social media. This piece is logical as it describes the fine line that differentiates the stereotypical “tourist” versus the more serious “traveler.” Culler has in-depth reasoning as to why both exist, the issues that arise from tourism, and why becoming a traveler needs to become the new normal so cultures do not get degraded.

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Phillip Wade Wilson

The Semiotics of Tourism: Everything Has Consequences – Description

There were a few points within this reading that resonated deeply within me and made me take a second and just think. I found myself saying “wow” or laughing a bit as I read this because I never organized my thoughts about tourists and travelers in this way before, but I know for a fact I too dichotomize the two and stereotype the tourist as inherently negative while the traveler is its noble counterpart. I found it even more interesting when Culler displayed the thoughts of Fussell in juxtaposition to Boorstin, and I happened to agree with both explanations of how those authors describe tourists and travelers. I think, while possibly on the extreme side, Fussell brings up good points in relation to societal pressures and expectations while Boorstin centers his claims around the way times have changed to make travel itself easier. To me, it seemed that Fussell cast the motives of tourists as equitable to that of a person at a massage parlor in order to pretend to be something they are not to escape the natural bounds of one’s life and attempt to rationalize the haunting conditions of a normal, working, average person was quite relatable, at least in my life.

Like we talked about with beachgoing in America, once at the beach we kind of succumb to this carnival-like state of not caring about societal norms or expectations or even about what may be the best for us in general… it almost seems like taking a trip anywhere, not just the beach, taps us into our own hedonistic nature. When I go on vacations, I always end up spending more money than I should; if I go to the beach, I typically get more sun than I should; I usually eat more unhealthily and focus on what I want to eat at that moment rather than taking a step back from my cravings; I tend to focus more on what I want in that time than what anyone else wants. Fussell describes this in a sense and it resonated with me in more ways than just one. I found his argument, while more emotional based, to be stronger than Boorstin’s even though Culler seemed to lean more toward Boorstin’s and cast Fussell in a negative light after he quoted him.

Another major takeaway from this piece was the way authenticity was portrayed. I have always attempted to look at things from an outside perspective in order to better contextualize what I am experiencing, but Culler’s work takes it so much further. A self-reflection, of sorts, into our own biases and understanding of the world will help us see the “signs” without letting our “alibis” cloud our perceptions. I tended to view tourist traps, like the city of Pisa in Italy or the Empire State Building in NYC (if you have been to either of those you know what I am referring to), as a detriment to the experience I, or anyone, could have but after reading about the way “markers” ultimately heighten our experiences I have a newfound love for my memories within those places. After finishing Culler’s work it became even clearer to me that everything, no matter how small, has consequences.

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Samuel James Conroy

Refutation Progymnasmata

Refutation Progymnasmata

            John Urry’s article, “The Tourist Gaze Revisited,” is an interesting piece breaking down why he believes that people travel and the cultural appropriation that these travelers bring with them intentionally or unintentionally. However, this is a highly critical piece on tourists that talks about how their “tourist gaze” is actually aesthetic appropriation. I find this to be an interesting take as I quite disagree with his overall opinion.

I agree with Urry on how advertising and certain rhetorical imagery has painted certain places to be these wild landscapes that one must see. This paints a picture that you should just travel to these places to see the view which causes a domination of the other culture. However, I believe that the general populous does not travel just to go see some view that is advertised throughout the country, rather, they just enjoy going to explore places for what they are. A majority of people travel either to just get away or to find themselves in some way they feel they’ve been lacking; it seems quite stereotypical to assume that people are traveling just to see some great view and then use it to appropriate an entire culture.  Urry states,

“Much tourism becomes in effect a search for the photogenic, it is a strategy for the accumulation of photographs.”

While back in the 1900s I believe travel was more directed towards this feeling, nowadays it seems the sentiment has changed. Travel is more widely available, and people can see photos online of the most beautiful areas they want to see, so traveling has evolved more into getting to escape from your current life in my opinion.

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Phillip Wade Wilson

The Tourist Gaze “Revisited” – John Urry: Narrative

“The most mundane of activities, such as shopping, strolling, sitting having a drink, or swimming, appear special when conducted against a striking visual backcloth”

It always seems that when I travel somewhere different the most boring of activities I almost dread to do at home become somewhat of an excitement. I’m not sure if it’s the excitement of doing this activity somewhere new or the fact that I’m happy or even excited about being in that different place altogether so everything seems fun. As Urry has stated, we tourists love to look for the perceptions we want to see in a different place and the visual impact this has on us is based on the presence we are in and what that means to us. I think about every place I have been, especially recently, and I remember how seeing a style of architecture or a landmark changed my perspective of the city or area I was in. On my last trip abroad when I was in Milan, I remember the sights I saw most of all… least of all I remember the smells of the city, the taste of the food, and the sounds I heard. I remember bits and pieces of the latter, but the sights are ingrained much deeper in my memories than everything else.

The idea of sightseeing and using our vision that Urry portrays, in a way, reminds of me of ‘veni, vidi, vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered). As a tourist, I go to a certain country or city or town or even historical site. As a tourist, I see all the site has to offer while documenting my time there via camera and memories I get to savor for a lifetime. As a tourist, I conquer the place I visit by experiencing all it has to offer and taking it all in so that I can take them back home with me.

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Samuel James Conroy

Proverb Progymnasmata

Proverb Progymnasmata

            The writing in the article, “Breaking Down an Image,” is quite superb. Rhetoric images are not talked about a lot in the world of literature due to there not being many images typically instilled in writings. In this piece the author breaks down a system to decipher images in text to understand their true meaning. This is done by breaking down the analyzation into numerous categories. These categories are: Audience, Context, Purpose, Tone, Arrangement, Location, Scale, Text, Typography, Font Size, Font Type, Color, Connotation, and finally Readability. This was done because many people do not typically think about why images are placed where they are and how it persuades us. The main thing to consider when viewing an image is the visual rhetoric that it gives off, or the effect that is has on someone.

It is best to be in touch with the images that you are viewing or else you are putting yourself in a bubble of ignorance. This is the equivalent of not reading the news, so you don’t have to face the realities of life and view what is truly going on around you. Some may choose to live like this as that way they can go about thinking all is good and be a living embodiment of ignorance is bliss. One cannot hope to understand what is trying to be said to them unless they can accurately analyze what is being shown whether it is through images or writing, which “Breaking Down an Image” tries to service.