PB1B
Stereotypes
are everywhere in our lives. When we look at something for the first time, we
subconsciously analyze almost everything about it and make assumptions based on
those observations. We are told as young children to not judge “books by their
covers” yet do it all the time. Is this bad? Definitely not, as this process
has been shaped by the experiences and encounters throughout our lives. It is
how we learn and grow as humans.
It is
roughly the same concept with these online genre generators. Though they all
deal with different genres of literary works, the sites use similar tactics to
spit out a spot on finished product. The genres range from computer science
articles to comedy in the form of Internet memes and comics.
With
computer science articles, the name immediately brings to mind several
conventions. Personally, I think of numbers, graphs, and confusing language
that everyday readers probably will not understand. When visited to try it out,
the site generated pretty much exactly that.
The first article was titled Deconstructing
Lamport Clocks with RowSackbut by yours truly. Now originally I did not
understand what the essay would be about and questioned if “RowSackbut” was an
actual thing. I looked it up and surprisingly it actually is a real thing but
unfortunately I am still too confused to explain what that encompasses. The article
had many sections and (surprise, surprise) multiple graphs. These help the tone
of the literary work and keep it scientific and explanative.
The next
genre was much more entertaining. I have been reading comics since I was young
and have always enjoyed the LOL’s that come from them. The comic generator in
this case did not disappoint me. The conventions of this genre are well known
across many age groups and are probably not as difficult to analyze as other
genres might be. To start off, they can be colorful or in black and white. They
are animated with different drawing styles and attempt to prove a point,
whether it is political, personal, or social, through a short series of
drawings and well-placed blurbs. These blurbs explain the context of the
drawings and sometimes even tell out a story over multiple weeks of comics.
Popular syndicated works of this genre include Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and
my personal favorite, Sherman’s Lagoon.
Internet
memes are a more modern genre that can also be easily analyzed in terms of
their conventions. Most memes are short and use the tool of sarcasm to make fun
of a certain topic. These topics range anywhere from current political matters
and ecological problems, to current culture fads and social news stories. They
are similar to comics in that they use humor to address an issue, but different
in the way that they employ a lot of “Tongue-in-cheek” humor. For those of you
not familiar with that colloquialism, it is an expression that refers to humor
that should not be taken at face value. In fewer words: sarcasm. Another big
difference between the two genres is that a meme is one picture with one blurb
on top of it instead of a series of pictures that make up a comic. The picture
is carefully chosen for memes and usually follows a current social joke. For
example, my personal favorite generated by memegenerator.net was a picture of
the actor Heath Ledger as the Joker, and the blurb reads “One year left of
water in California and nobody panics. Dude leaves One Direction and everyone
loses their minds.” The joker looks like he can’t believe what is happening in
the picture which goes along nicely with the blurb because lets be honest, who
in their right minds would be more upset about another boy band break up than
an increasingly ginormous drought? It humorously juxtaposes the picture with
the blurb to draw attention to the problem that people in our society have
their priorities kind of messed up.
By trying
to understand what each genre is providing and by looking at the conventions,
we as readers can really experience what the writers fully wanted to get across
to us. The conventions show trends in their respective genres and make it
easier to absorb the material. Whether it is tedious science articles or ‘pee
your pants’ funny comics and memes, their genres encapsulate similar
conventions that you can notice each time you look at that piece of literary
work.
I included some of my favorite works!
I really enjoyed reading this blog post! It was very smooth to read through your analysis about the different generators. It felt as though you were reading your blog post to me; it flowed very well. I also liked your introduction because it helped me organize my thoughts before jumping into the topic of the genre generators. I think you did a very good job on pointing out the common conventions, but I thought you could have elaborated more about how the certain conventions are significant in that certain style of genre.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, I liked your sense of humor as well. The meme you posted was definitely relevant to our modern day situation. I’m glad that we also share interests of reading Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield! I’ll definitely will try to look in to reading, Sherman’s Lagoon. I’m sure with your other taste in comics, I’ll enjoy it too!
The introduction you begin with is excellent at informing the reader of the subject of the PB and easing them into the piece. I like that you actually went and researched to see if the generator was using made-up words. I think it’s safe to say that most of the words thrown into the generated research paper are real, just highly confusing and irrelevant to the actual paper. I really enjoyed that you included examples of famous comics to compare to the comic generator. It was a really good idea to draw parallels between the generated comics and the actual comics, as I think it allows the reader to think about the conventions you just identified as components of actual works from the comic genre. I really appreciate that you talked about (and defined!) tongue-in-cheek humor. It made it very easy to think about this kind of humor and make the connection to the kind of humor memes employ. Really, really good job!
ReplyDeleteAmani,
ReplyDeleteYour bio makes me think that you're wise beyond your years. Major compliment. You sounded “grounded” yet full of life and dreams, and that’s the perfect balance in my opinion. (PS: my momma is my favorite person in the word too.)
PB1A: To be honest, your analysis of the “movie synopsis” as its own genre seemed a bit incohesive. What are its conventions? Being exciting? Not giving too much away? I can’t argue with either of those, but I feel like it’s lacking a bit of specificity. Tieing those claims (it’s exciting, it gives away something but not everything) would have been stronger if you connected it with specific examples like you did for the movie “It Follows” (which I thought was effective). Maybe the issue for me was not “going deep” on one specific movie genre. By not limiting the specific type of movie genre, your analysis wasn’t as focused as it could’ve been. (If it sounds like I’m picking on you, by the way, I know that you’re super-smart. It’s my job to push you and get the most out of you that I can. ☺)
PB1B: I want you to remember that it’s important for us to take a look at “every little thing” that exists in these genres. From the bigger/bolder font of the section titles to the appearance of graphs/figures/tables, these all play a role in the conventions of a genre. You never know what kind of important details exist beneath the surface (or, actually, on the surface). Ditto on the importance of attending to all the details in the comic genre—who was the audience? Kids, like we expect for the “standard” comic? Well, probably not, so why not? What were some of the recurring themes in the (repulsive) content? I want you to be as specific as possible and give (always!) evidence to back up your reasons. Don’t forget: Writing 2 is, essentially, helping us to become “pattern hunters.” Be on the lookout for every last little pattern that you can find—being able to pinpoint them is crucial for us to heighten our genre awareness.
So you know, I thought that your writing “style” in these blog entries was excellent. I want much more detail, though, Amani. Keep up the hard work and the great in-class participation.
Grade for both PBs: 4/5
PB1A: “Check/check minus.”
PB1B: “Check/check minus.”
Z