TOW #28 - IRB - Love is a Mixtape

Listening to the radio in the car, there’s almost always one song that bring back memories.  For Rob Sheffield, music has enabled him to do many things in life, like creating memories.  It has also allowed him to form relationships with people that without music, may not have worked.  Sheffield’s reliance on music is shown with the anecdotes in his book.  They capture important moments in life that tie back to music.  Sheffield using these anecdotes emphasizes the importance of music, and how it impacts lives, especially his.

                Sheffield’s use of anecdotes describes the background of both him and Renée.  His late wife, Renée, held the same passion that he had for music.  He describes that, “Renée was a real cool hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl.  Her favorite song was the Rolling Stones’ ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together,” and “she bought too many shoes and dyed her hair red.  Her voice was full of the frazzle and crackle of music” (4).  In contrast, he describes himself as “a shy, skinny, Irish Catholic geek from Boston.  I’d never met anybody like Renée before,” additionally, “the first time I saw a possum in my driveway, I shook a bony fist at the sky and cursed this godforsaken rustic hellhole” (5).  These anecdotes detail the complete difference between him and Renée.  These polar opposites were able to connect with music.   He even says that, “we had nothing in common, except we both loved music” (6).  They depended on it to keep their relationship together.  Sheffield’s use of his stories help describe his situation, but this contributes to the idea that music formed his relationships.  Without it, he wouldn’t have formed a five-year long marriage with Renée.  Sheffield’s reliance on music helps show its importance in daily life.  It helped create relationships that he would not have had otherwise.  

TOW #27 - Why is Asian Salad Still on the Menu

Walking into a restaurant, it is not difficult to find culturally diverse and exotic foods.  However, one type of item often comes with an interesting name.  Asian foods are commonly given jokey names “Oriental Chop Chop.  Mr. Mao’s.  Secret Asian Man.  Asian Emperor.  China Island.  Chicken Asian Chop Chop.  Chinese-y Chicken” (Tsui 4).  These names reflect the common misrepresentation of Asian Americans.  Bonnie Tsui brings attention to this problem with the use of personal experience as research.  Utilizing this research has allowed Tsui to highlight the issue of unseen racism in our daily lives.

                Being an Asian American, Tsui documents the many things she’s seen in restaurants.  In her piece, she uses what she encounters as inspiration for her research.  She includes historical context on the creation of the title, “Asian Fusion.”  She notes that is was created in the 80’s and used by popular chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Roy Yamaguchi.  They sparked popularity of titling foods “Asian.”  Today, restaurants used this to their advantage, “A single Cheesecake Factory, Rainforest Café or Applebee’s could sell 500 Asian salads a week.  Each chain punched up the name to seem foreign yet familiar” (Tsui 10).  Not only does her factual evidence establish credibility in her article, but it also serves to expose these restaurants.  Applebee’s and other are utilizing Asian culture as a way to produce revenue.  Characterizing an item as Asian draws customer’s in since it sounds exotic and foreign. Not only are the restaurants just using the name, but they don’t even know the ingredients to their food.  Tsui asked Applebee’s for “more specifics on what made its Asian greens Asian and its Oriental vinaigrette Oriental, a spokesman told me the company was unable to ‘provide a thorough response” (Tsui 11).  Restaurants are solely using the Asian title as a marketing tool.

                Tsui documents the problems with restaurants through her own experiences.  Not only are restaurants using the name to draw customers, but they also don’t know what they’re putting into these foods or what makes it “Asian.”  This problem plays into the racism Asian Americans face in the country.  Their culture is taken advantage of so other companies and businesses can profit.

TOW #26 - To Stay Married, Embrace Change

“Till death do us part.”  A phrase said by almost every soon to be wife and husband.  Despite this promise, many marriages end with one partner, or both, filing for divorce.  Narrowing down the most common reason for splitting is difficult, There’s a myriad of reasons for why someone decides to leave their partner.  Ada Calhoun writes that often times the villain of marriage is change.  Whether it be too much change or not enough, partners lose their love for someone they once loved, or became someone new and their partner didn’t change along with them.  Calhoun emphasizes the need for accepting change through her use of first person further showing the importance of maintaining relationships in life.   

            Calhoun’s firsthand experience with divorce is detailed in her piece through first person.  She explains how her marriage wasn’t a big deal to her or her husband, Nick.  In fact, they “told anyone who asked that the marriage was no big deal,” (22), hinting at the fact that neither of them felt impacted by their legal binding.  Furthermore, Calhoun includes how she “didn’t feel different the next day.  We still fell asleep to “Politically Incorrect” with our cats at our feet as we always had” (21).  This lack of change was detailed in first person, giving readers the truth of how she felt to reach to appeal to their emotions.  Nothing changed after her and Nick became husband and wife, instead they pushed their marriage off as insignificant.  In her case, marking marriage as unimportant made their life consistent and unchanging.  The audience reads how Calhoun’s lack of change led to how her husband become ex-husband.  As not many people want to experience divorce, Calhoun’s first person account of her failing marriage serves as a warning to readers, pushing them to create change in their own relationships, rather than let them be the same thing day after day.

            Human nature is built off of several relationships.  Whether it be friends, family, or love, maintaining these relationships serves to keep us happy in life.  As change tends to be unavoidable, adjusting to change or creating it yourself helps keep relationships going.  Calhoun emphasizes this in her use of first person to strike fear in her audience, as she urges them to not fall into an unchanging life.  She pushes this idea as a way to help others strengthen their relationships and help other be happier in life.

IRB Intro Post #4 - Love is a Mixtape

The book I chose to read for this marking period is "Love is a Mixtape" by Rob Sheffield. This book interested me because it uses songs to tell a love story between two very different people.  I have never read something like this before and it involves music from the 90s, which is a creative way of telling a story.  Additionally, the inside cover includes the metaphor, "Love is a mix tape," which is also the title. I am intrigued to see how this metaphor plays into the book as a whole.

TOW #25 - Visual Text

In this public advertisement created by UN Women, they are using the search engine Google to convey how women are viewed in the world.  UN Women is an organization formed in 2010 focused on the empowerment and equality of women.  Being an international organization, UN Women reach countries far and wide, and reach a large demographic.  By using the popular search engine Google, UN Women emphasize the need for women to be treated equally everywhere in the world.  An aspect of Google is that when someone searches something, popular results are listed underneath the search bar.  UN Women uses this aspect to list the way women are thought of.  The common results are that women need to “be put in their place,” “know their place,” “be controlled,” and “be disciplined.”  All of these play into their audience’s feeling of both shock and sadness that they feel when reading this advertisement.  It is shocking that there are thoughts on how women need to be in society.  The fact that people believe in restricting women’s rights and freedoms in some parts of the world emphasize the need to change these ideas.  In addition, using Google as the platform to show these views increase how modern these problems are.  UN Women then juxtapose these issues with the phrase “women need to be seen as equal.”  This contrast between positive and negative increases the stark difference between how women are seen, and how they should be viewed.  UN Women use this add to bring awareness to not only the unfair treatment of women but also hint at pushing their audience to stop ignoring these problems.  

TOW #24 - IRB - Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay’s enticing book Bad Feminist reveals truths in many aspects of our culture.  She covers books, movies, and public figures and examines the way all three of these things affects our culture.  Gay aims to emphasize the inequality minorities face in the public eye.  Not only that, she succeeds in evaluating the good and bad aspects of popular pieces of entertainments.  Through evaluating these pieces, Gay touches on how recognizing injustice can further better our society.

                In an attempt to follow with popular culture, Gay decides to watch Orange is the New Black (OITNB), an extremely popular TV show based on the experiences a woman faced during her time in prison.  At its release, OITNB captivated a large audience, known for its groundbreaking plot and diverse characters, OITNB was praised for its excellency.  Gay agrees, “the show is reasonably well written, there’s a ‘interesting’ premise, and the cast is diverse” (250).  Despite its showcase of several characters, Gay finds this aspect overly repetitive.  Every time someone mentions the show, its diversity never fails to be mentioned.  Laverne Cox and Tanya Wright, actresses on the show, “create beautifully acted scenes that are intimate, bittersweet, and honest” (251).  However, all many can say about the show is remarkably diverse” (251) is it.  Furthermore, with its diversity comes a possibility of mistakes.  For example, “so many opportunities for the show to be truly original and smart are missed by wide margins” (251).  The Haitian character on the show does not even seem Haitian.  Another con with the show is the fact that all of the character revolve around the main, Piper.  Instead, Gay emphasizes the importance of supporting character creating their own solar system, and revolving around their issues rather than another.  Despite the show’s popularity many viewers fall into the trap of recognizing its diversity rather than seeing some of its faults.

                In recognizing the diversity of a show, Gay agrees with its popularity when it was released.  However, now it is all anyone can talk about.  Gay questions the bar set by our culture when it comes to “different” TV shows.  Is a small piece of diversity considered ground breaking, or are our standards for what’s new too low?  Yes, Orange is the New Black is different, and exciting, but one shouldn’t let that overpass the faults in the show itself.  Perhaps seeing these issues can create more shows changing entertainment’s platform, and work towards exposing more racial issues at hand.

TOW #23 - The Seasons Aren't What They Used to Be

Last month the east coast was basking in 70-degree weather, and now snow covers the ground.  At first, early spring seemed glorious, a break from harsh winter chills.  However, this bipolar weather is a tell-tale sign of one of our planet’s biggest threats, global warming.  Scientists have been tracking the change of the seasons for decades now, and it is clear that the seasons have been coming earlier each year.  As David Haskell writes, it is imperative that we pay more attention to the world around us to save future generations from losing the seasonal changes we know now. 

                As a way to raise awareness of the seasonal changes, Haskell uses harrowing facts to reveal the severity of Earth’s situation.  It’s not obvious the planet is changing, spring comes earlier, snow still falls after spring is announced, yet with the help of scientists, the change is increasingly evident.  In fact, “the spring emergence of leaves, frogs, birds and flowers advanced in the Northern Hemisphere by 2.8 days per decade” (3), and for the author, who is around 50 years old, spring has moved forward about 2 weeks in his lifetime.  Spring moving forward has disrupted nature and all of the creatures that rely on seasonal change to survive.  Bears emerge from hibernation early, flowers and other plants grow 2 weeks ahead.  Climate change hasn’t taken the pedestal since the Environmental Movement’s rise in the 60s.  Now more than ever it is becoming more important to combat seasonal change, or at least raise awareness of it.  “Spring came about 20 days early in the Eastern and Midwestern United States” (6), and bird populations are struggling thanks to arriving early and finding out their insect food isn’t there.  All of these problems have “affected 82 percent of the biological processes that underpin all life” (11).  These issues highlighted emphasize the importance of realizing what is wrong with the planet, and how we need to pay more attention in order to fix these problems.

                Our role on this earth when it comes to the environment is to not just be aware of the changes we face.  Instead, we play an essential role in being the ones to change or reverse the issues at hand.  More research and the work of scientists have only revealed the problems at hand, and the next step is to create fixes to these problems.  All together, the idea of fixing our planet better the world for the future.  Though it won’t be our future that we’re working for, instead it is the future generations that have no control over what happens today.