Rhetoric in Popular Culture ch. 3 - Brummett

Author, title, chapters: Barry Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture,  chapter 3.

Thesis: Brummett argues that a text can give meaning to an object, event, or action, whether it is a meaning that struggles against the meaning another text has assigned to it, or a meaning that has been taken by the person who read the text and changed to fit their personal view of the world. In order to detect and analyze this meaning, one must use critical interpretation, which digs beneath the surface appearance of an object/text/etc. and asks questions about the complexity and meaning of it, seeking to discover the message the text is trying to communicate. Brummett then goes on to illustrate the ways one must carefully dig for the meaning, starting with how to classify a text, finding what the context of that text is, searching for ways the author tries to influence your opinion (through sentence structure, their phrasing, and the things they say), and remembering to keep in mind that your own personal experiences come into play when determining the significance that the text is trying to place on the occurrence, object, or event. 

What Brummett was talking about really made me think of celebrities and how every little move they make can be interpreted as something that it's not, or discussed and pored over and carefully dissected to extract any tiny bits of meaning. The entire time I was reading this chapter, I was thinking of this picture of Harry Styles (of the band One Direction):

Whenever Styles wears this shirt, speculation abounds about what it means: is he subtly confessing his homosexuality? Is he trying to make a point about gay marriage and its legality? Is he wearing it ironically? Is he secretly trying to express his love for fellow bandmate Louis Tomlinson (there are an inordinate number of rumors flying around on news websites and fan blogs of their alleged secret relationship)? 

Meanings such as these can be assigned so easily by the author of an article or a blog post, and I don't think any celebrity has escaped these kinds of speculations and instances of people reading things into their actions. 

Recently, Miley Cyrus got her hair cut and dyed. 

For almost anyone in the world, this would have sparked a few comments from friends and family: perhaps "Nice haircut!" or  "Love the new hair color!" For Miley, the reaction from fans, interviewers, news sites, etc. was instantaneous. People were outraged, confused, disgusted, adoring; nobody could agree on whether she was just doing it for the attention, or because she was trying to separate herself from her clean-cut, teenage pop-star image, or if she was heading in the same direction as Britney Spears did with her legendary head-shaving episode. So many meanings from a simple picture of a new hairdo!

To me, the most interesting aspect of Brummett's chapter was where he talked about how to read a text carefully and analytically for all the ways in which the author is trying to impress their own ideas of the meaning/significance of an event, object, action, etc. upon you as the reader: I had never before realized how simplistically I had been reading articles, books, even just my friends' opinions of a new blockbuster movie. They are all trying (whether they themselves realize it or not) to spread their own meaning to me, and some are less subtle than others: for example, when I read this review of the movie The Social Network, I was struck by how some of the language of the author affects my opinion of the film - just the words that they choose to describe it are already affecting the meaning that I'm assigning to it, and I've already seen this movie! The adjectives used to describe the movie and its cast are exciting and animated, and the writing style is fast-paced and enthusiastic - like the author is trying, with his/her own passion, to spread it to me. And it works! I find myself telling people how much I loved the movie for the same reasons as the review's author, while before I read this review I would probably have told you that it was a pretty average movie with a nice-looking cast that did a good job. 

Some further questions that I came up with on this reading are:

1. To use the Hunger Games as an example of the way in which people can struggle to assign something meaning, what is one action in the Hunger Games whose meaning changed/was struggled over? What were its different meanings and who was trying to assign each meaning to it?

2. Do you think the meanings that are assigned to things are out of your control, with media and pop culture ceaselessly pouring their own meanings into your head? Or do you assign your own meanings to everything? Somewhere in between? Explain.