The Rhetoric of (Older) Music

I was thinking about making a post about all music, but that's way too long and extensive for me to properly cover. I am probably only going to focus on one song, depending on how this post goes as I write it.

The song I am listening to now is "American Pie" by Don McLean. I guarantee that you know what this song is. It's by far one of the most famous songs in American history. It's about 9 minutes long, which has some rhetoric implications in itself. Today, many songs aren't longer than 4 minutes, 5 at the most. However, this song manages to be completely engaging through the whole 8:42. Maybe it's the audience that usually listens to the song appreciates music with a message, which I think can take a longer amount of time to fully develop. And this song has a feel of a jam-session a little bit. Like they just started recording and went on. I doubt that's what actually happened, but it feels like that. Jam music is a very interesting study in itself, and lots of people love the pure music feeling it provides.

The crux of this song is the lyrics. It recounts the Day the Music Died, or when the plan carrying Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, and the aftermath of the tragic event. This song has the effect of portraying grief in the traditional, sad sense. But there's also an Irish wake feel to the grief. The song is not entirely song, as the build-up to the song is fast-paced and fun. It gets incredibly sad near the end, but ends at a hopeful kind of note. I don't know if any of that made sense, but I think listening to the song helps to give the real feel of what's happening.

I've listened to this song so many times and every time it still seems like a surprise when I hear it. It's such a pure song. Again, I don't know if that makes sense, but it really just seems pure to me. Music at its best, telling a great story and getting you to feel a lot of different things. On another note, my mom knows all the lyrics to this song, which is pretty impressive. She proceeds to belt it out any time it is played to prove to everyone that she knows the lyrics, even though no one questions her.

If you don't sing along to the chorus, I don't know if you can ever appreciate music!
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry
...I'll let you finish the rest.

The Rhetoric of Twitter

The Twitter logo. www.twitter.com

I was thinking of writing about social media as a whole, but I thought that focusing on Twitter alone would be more interesting. The idea of Twitter is that users can send short messages about whatever they may be doing at any time. Any message, or tweet, is fine to be posted-as long as it is less than 140 characters.

The required brevity of tweets requires users to be concise about what they want their followers to read about them. Longer tweets require two messages, and no one likes a two-message (or longer) tweet. It's sloppy and shows the inability to shorten your own thoughts for the sake of your followers.

Now, most people do not care about what most other people are doing at any given time in the day. The main reason Twitter succeeded at all is because people were (and still are) very much interested in what certain people, usually celebrities or political figures, are doing/thinking at any time. This ability was unprecedented and allowed people to connect to their favorite celebrities in a way that still astounds me.

Twitter has had incredible world-wide impacts as well. The most dramatic example of this is the role social media, and especially Twitter, played in the Arab Spring, when many countries in the Middle East coordinated their strives towards freedom through Twitter. In a more day-to-day example, Twitter is almost like a news source. Whenever I hear about something I feel is unbelievable, the death of a celebrity for example, I immediately turn to Twitter to see if it is true. When news of something particularly influential breaks, people flock to Twitter to speak their minds on the issue. In fact, I get more of my news from the Trending Topics on Twitter (the collection of the most tweeted-about words/phrases) than anything else.

Social media as a whole has lead to such change in the world, and I feel that Twitter will exponentially increase this impact and help people as whole will become more socially aware.

The Rhetoric of Movies

Since I've been doing my passion blog, I've noticed a couple things about movies. The most glaring being how many movies center, or at least involve, some aspect of crime. All but one of the movies I have watched (which are all included in IMDB's top 250, which fans vote for) have centered around crime or prison, and the one that didn't had an aspect of crime in it (Groundhog Day features Bill Murray being chased by police after he steals Punxsutawny Phil). This got me thinking.

Director Martin Scorsese with some of the best actors
of our time. ethiopolitics.com

Why are crime films received better among the public? People watch movies more or less as an escape, to sit down and fantasize (or dread about) a different kind of reality. Do that many people wish they could break the law in all these different kinds of ways? I think the phenomena goes deeper than simply people like the crime aspect they cannot live in their own lives. I instead believe that's it almost a trickle down effect.

Directors usually want to be taken seriously and considered great. Most directors of romantic comedies are not considered to be fantastic directors (a generalization that isn't always true, I know). If you look at great directors (Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Clint Eastwood, etc) most of their films involve some element of crime (the only real exception I found was Steven Spielberg). Since these great directors usually desire to do crime-centered movies, those movies are automatically at an advantage to be better. And it doesn't stop there. Great directors usually have good relationships with great actors (Jack Nicholson with Scorsese is the most glaring example). The effect great actors can have on a movie is astronomical. And these great directors and actors have their great relationships with great screenwriters, composers, film crews, and all the way down the line. So from this great director comes an entire slew of talent. It makes you think how any crime movies could fail at all.

The Rhetoric of Spring Break

These picture will ALWAYS end up on the internet.
collegewallofshame.com

With Spring Break approaching, countless college students are preparing for various cruises, flights, or various other travelling adventures to surely beautiful places. This got me thinking, what does Spring Break, at least the stereotypical Spring Break implanted in the minds of most people, really say about those that partake in it, particularly college students?

I've already touched on the common perception of college students, so I will try to spare the generalizations and focus on the perceptions as it applies to Spring Break. Many of these college students on these trips to various paradises around the world partake in some questionable behavior, and that seems to get widely critiqued. I agree that these students might at times get a little out of control, but everyone has to consider the origins of this reputation for college kids going crazy during Spring Break. After all, most of the people now judging these students are responsible for the current reputation.

This is a main reason I criticize older adults who criticize young adults. These perceptions are usually skewed negatively from the start, and skewed because of how they themselves acted when they were younger. What most adults fail to realize is the reason why they no longer act like college students. Most of these adults learned to recognize and avoid this potentially self-destructive by acting out and suffering the consequences. Trial and error still remains, and probably will always remain, as the main and best way to learn about life. The young adults of today will learn that this behavior they currently partake in cannot and will not allow them to succeed in the real world. But they will not learn this by older people yelling at them to act like they are currently acting. If anything, this only makes younger people want to rebel MORE. I just think those older adults out there need to remember all the stupid things they did when they were young (and I bet my life that everyone has those moments) and relax a little bit. People sometimes need to burn their hand on the stove before they learn to check if the burners are on first. It's a part of life, and something I believe contributes to how beautiful life really is. And those current young adults need to relax when they become the older adults. Although this will never happen, I like to think wishfully.

So, college students everywhere, have a wonderful Spring Break. Do some stupid things, but nothing that you know is dangerously stupid. Don't resist on taking a risk for fear of what your parents would think. They've done worst, even if they refuse to admit it to you.