Response to 7/6 Readings

I am not a teacher, so a lot of the controversy and arguments surrounding digital literacy and new media in education is lost on me. But after viewing the English Downfall video, it really clicked and I feel my understanding of the issues jumped up to a whole new level.

In using Hitler and the analogy of a failing, desperate infrastructure fighting off "progress," the "author" allows me, an outsider, to see the argument in a framework that makes immediate sense. I don't have to be a composition or classic literature professor to understand that the debate is between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, history and progress. The analogy was effective and made its point very clearly.

In the video rebuttal, the "author" is another English professor who takes great offense to the appropriation of Hitler and the Nazis. As a member of academia, he understands that people feel passionately about this particular argument, but he draws the line at using potentially offensive imagery to advance one's argument. He likens the original video to the hate speech used on talk radio by the conservative right.

I wasn't offended by the joking, sarcastic use of Hitler in the original video because I thought it was a clever use of images that are heavy with meaning to most people. By using the Nazis in their final desperate days, the English Downfall video was able to get its point across with virtually nothing lost in translation. Any one in any field, with no prior knowledge of the academic debate surrounding English and writing courses immediately understands both sides of the argument.

As a result, I thought Doug Shaw was being humorless and too serious in his rebuttal video. His call for civility in debate was a point well-taken, but his insertion of his personal family history with the Nazis seemed like overkill. I assume the English Downfall creator understands that the Nazi regime was horrible and that genocide is no laughing matter, but he used this extreme imagery to make a satirical point. Satire, like some of the best comedy, depends on being outrageous and pushing the envelope.

I was left feeling that Doug Shaw must be a real stick in the mud who doesn't "get it"... until I watched Doug Walls' "Case for Mindful Rhetorical Media Use" video. I thought Walls' deconstruction of the word "authentic" in relation to food and his bit on the Mexican restaurants was smart and astute and I was listening intently until he began talking about colonial rhetoric and slavery.

He rightly argued that colonizers instituted dehumanizing language and tropes to support their use of slavery and we were in sync until he used the graphics of little brown cartoon slaves in chains being thrown overboard into the shark infested water with the captions "This cruise sucks" and "I thought there was going to be a buffet." Suddenly, I was the stick in the mud like Doug Shaw because I thought this was totally glib and offensive and unfunny. I understood that it was satire like Hitler/Downfall but I truly didn't find it the slightest bit humorous.

I challenged myself to see if I was in the same position as Shaw where I was being "too sensitive" because of my race or personal history. Are we equally humorless? I don't know...