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The elevator pitch that really stood out to me was Alexandra’s. She volunteered to present first and her confidence and preparation was made extremely clear with her delivery. She had her pitch close to memorized and clearly knew a lot about her artifact, Martin Luther King’s Letters from Birmingham Jail.
Alexandra started out strong, commanding her audience’s attention with her eye contact and engaging hook. She clearly identified the exigence of her artifact and the context behind Martin Luther King ending up in jail, as well as King’s emergence as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Her argument somewhat clearly identified her thesis of these letters’ importance to the Civil Rights Movement and American history itself, however there were a few key pieces her elevator pitch was missing.
First, while Alexandra did an excellent job reflecting on the rhetorical situation of her artifact, she selected rhetorical situation as her lens instead of including factors like ethos, logos, and pathos, or commonplaces. In our conversation with the class, we were sure to point this out and emphasize the importance of analyzing our artifacts through a lens other than just rhetorical situation because that is what everyone will be doing.
Additionally, since her pitch did not look through a deeper lens than just rhetorical situation, her elevator pitch served as more of a summary of her artifact than actually critically analyzing it. Obviously, being one or two minutes, the elevator pitch cannot go on and on about every little detail- there is time for that in the actual pitch. However, I would have liked for there to be a little bit more than what her artifact is and that it helped fight injustice. How? What did it specifically say that resonated with people? I am glad she included a quote from the Letters themselves, quoting “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, but she simply states that this was written and says nothing else about this. Why should we care? What does this mean to him? To you? To the audience it was written for?
Though there are small improvements to make, it is clear Alexandra has passion for and knowledge of this topic and I am looking forward to hearing her speech.
Barbie in a Mermaid Tale follows Merliah Summers, a star surfer who discovers that her mother is actually a mermaid from the mystical underwater land of Oceana. After realizing that her mother is being held hostage in a dungeon by her evil sister, Eris, Merliah must travel to Oceana to save her mother from the tyrant and give the ocean its life again.
Even just starting with the name, the word play is genius- tale instead of tail allows for the double meaning and shows exactly what the story is about. This movie depicts such beautiful underwater scenes in Oceana, and includes iconic references to real-world brands, such as a store called “Seaphora”. While I did not understand this as a kid, these subtle references make the movie continuously enjoyable to watch as I have gotten older. Merliah obtains a beautiful fake tail and the montage of her finding the perfect tail for her is so aesthetically pleasing.
The characters in this movie are incredibly likeable, and there is one seal character, Snouts, that always reminded me of my little brother. There is one scene where Merliah has to get a celestial comb from above water with Snouts watching below, when all of a sudden there is an avalanche and Merliah’s swimming capabilities are challenged as she tries to save him. This scene made me want to protect my little brother, who was a toddler at the time, and reminded me how much I care about him. To this day I think of him as my little brother even though he is in high school now, and Snouts the seal reminds me of his adorable toddler self.
Another character that I especially like is Eris’ sidekick seahorse, who is not given a name. Throughout the movie, this seahorse is expected to follow Eris’ orders and plays the horn to signal her entrance, though Eris abuses him and does not appreciate his musical talent. By the end of the movie, however, this seahorse has shyly expressed his compassion for Merliah and her mother, Calissa, and when Merliah compliments his musical playing it is clear to him that he has chosen the right side. I very much sympathize with this little seahorse and I enjoy when characters are given a redemption arc. Even though he started out underappreciated and with evil, he was able to have his happily ever after too.
Merliah’s relationship with her mom also had an impact on me as a child and made me appreciate how kind and caring my mother is, just like Calissa. An entire subplot of the movie is that Calissa is able to spin merilia, the life force of the sea, and Eris cannot. Eris gets jealous and overthrows Calissa but cannot kill her because she needs her merilia, so instead banishes her. This creates a plot twist that adds to the complexity of the movie. Calissa continues to stay positive and be the life force of the sea even as she suffers, and this strength reminds me of my own mom who continues to stay strong and full of life in the face of adversity. She is one of my role models just as Calissa is Merliah’s.
Lastly, this movie contains one of the catchiest songs- Queen of the Waves. This song will just get stuck in my head, as a kid and today. Merliah is truly the queen of the waves and I have always wanted to surf to be just like her, though I have never gotten the chance.
As a kid, I loved this movie so much I even have a Merliah Summers Barbie doll with clothes that are reversible as both a cute outfit and a tail. I even have her pink dolphin sidekick! I still have this doll, pink hair streak and all, and continue to watch this movie with my siblings. There are other movies that do have more music and I am disappointed that they tried making a sequel to this movie because it would have been much better on its own. However, it is still amazing which is why it is #8 on my list of top 9 Barbie movies.
December 14, 2012. As millions of American children and teachers returned home to their families, 26 bodies laid dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 6-year-olds, slaughtered, in a place where they should have been safe. Following this tragedy, President Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech addressing the nation about the events that occurred and expressed his sorrow. Obama, as the President of the United States, had the responsibility to respond to this event in a timely and appropriate manner, yet he emphasized his role as a parent over his authority to connect with audiences. He utilized ethos by reacting as a parent of two young girls to better relate to the parents and families who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Obama’s speech is full of pathos as he uses powerful connotations with the words “overwhelming grief” and “hearts are broken”. In expressing these emotions genuinely and deeply, the American audience is able to better connect to Obama’s words and relate to his feelings toward this tragedy. President Obama also references various commonplaces, acknowledging community, love, innocence, education, and various life experiences that the fallen children will never get to experience. Utilizing these commonplaces allows for the American people as a whole to understand the implications of this loss in regard to the families, victims, and communities torn apart as a result. This event, however, is not isolated. As the years have passed, many similar school shooting tragedies have occurred, taking the lives of more young children. As stories of these horrors are released, stories of elementary school children in Uvalde, Texas having baseball-sized holes in their bodies or smearing their friends’ blood on themselves to play dead, more people have become angry. Protests fighting for gun control have swept the nation, spreading to the new generations with leaders like X Gonzales, a Parkland shooting survivor. At what point do we make change? How many people have to protest and fight for change to happen? How many people have to die?
Thank you.
This movie is incredibly interesting because it is unlike any other movie on this list. This film follows Barbie in high school as she navigates her friendships, her crush who just so happens to be her enemy’s on-and-off boyfriend, and her struggle to land the position of anchor on her school news channel. In a twist of fate, Barbie finds that the mystical bracelet she bought unlocks a special diary where anything she writes happens in real life. She struggles to stay true to herself amidst a strong desire for popularity but ultimately learns that friendship is more important than popularity.
This movie is very modeled after early 2000s teen dramas, and is most likely named after the popular “The Princess Diaries”, a classic favorite of mine that I used to watch with my grandmother. I really liked this aspect of introducing new genres of movies past the classic Barbie magic themes, though this movie does include some form of magic. I would always watch this movie thinking that Barbie was so cool and grown up; while all Barbie movies depict Barbie and her friends as young adults, none of them show her in a setting like high school or college as this movie does. I distinctly remember thinking high school looked so fun with the lockers, the lawn for people to study on, and the clubs the characters were involved in. Barbie’s friend, Tia, runs for class president in this movie and I thought it was so cool; by the time I graduated high school I was class treasurer for four years!
The drama in this movie was also more mature than other Barbie animated films, centering around friendship drama as Barbie betrays her friends and abandons them in order to hang out with the popular crowd. This type of drama is very relatable to me and my experiences in middle school and watching this as a kid introduced me to the idea of what it means to be a loyal friend. There is also plenty of drama surrounding Raquel, Barbie’s enemy, who lands the anchor position Barbie wanted and then torments Barbie, who became her assistant, by forcing her to do pointless tasks. Raquel, as previously mentioned, also dated Barbie’s crush, Todd, and would rub it in at every opportunity. Honestly, as a kid, the infatuation Barbie had with Todd made me uncomfortable because that is my cousin’s name. Nonetheless, the aspects of teen dramas with football players, friendship drama, and school dances was a perfect transition from more childish movies to the types of movies I enjoy now (though I do love to rewatch childhood movies).
There are also many creative aspects to this movie that really stuck with me as a child. For instance, when Barbie loses her magic bracelet and her friends try to make her feel better, they make her a bracelet out of a broken guitar string, as they are all in a band together. For some reason I always wanted to have a guitar string bracelet after this movie. Barbie, being the innovator she is, also creates a lip gloss highlighter- a lip gloss that is disguised as a classroom tool so she could touch up her looks without it getting confiscated. While Raquel ends up getting Barbie in trouble for this scheme, I always thought Barbie was so creative for this and would try to recreate her looks.
This film being ranked #9 in no way means it’s bad. it’s a very enjoyable watch but does lack some of the childhood magic of the other movies on this list. I enjoy rewatching it from time to time but the animation is different from the other Barbie movies and is less aesthetically pleasing in my opinion. The storyline is also fairly simple, with no real plot twists other than finding out that the secret admirer notes Barbie received throughout the movie were not from Todd- they were actually from her best friend Kevin. For these reasons, I place this movie at a solid #9 spot on my list of Top 9 Animated Barbie movies.
If having difficulty viewing this image clearly, look up “L’Oreal This is an Ad for Men”
This advertisement, released by L’Oreal, touches on the various things that I read about in the most recent Keywords assignments on Commonplace and Rhetorical Situation. This ad headlines with the phrase “This is an ad for men”, which references the commonplace of products and items being specifically targeted to men, excluding women. Things like shampoo, deodorant, razors, beers, and more will specify that they are for men. It is normal for men not to care about products or media unless they are specifically for them, and women are expected to only buy products for women, which are often more expensive (look up the pink tax) and are lower quality (everyone knows men’s deodorant works better!) There are even small things like Tik Tok videos captioned “for my male audience”. While this is meant as a joke, the casual use of these phrases allow them to become commonplace and excused as jokes, even when the line between joke and sexism becomes blurry. However, L’Oreal uses this commonplace in their rhetorical situation to challenge this idea of only being for men. They use this language to catch the attention of men, who are the ones who need to be making the change. This ad takes the facts that higher amounts of women in companies leads to more revenue and that women are underrepresented in high-paid corporate positions and attempts to change it. They recognize the rhetorical situation and their ability to change the narrative as a brand that typically caters to women. In changing their audience and their language, they hope to change the way people view their brand versus other corporations who only have male leaders. This ad also caters to one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals of gender equality. This ad clearly favors gender equality and hopes for brands to hire more leadership roles and filling more female quotas. Implementing these changes is a current goal for corporations worldwide and is necessary, sustainable change that L’Oreal has now become a part of with this ad.
There are a lot of things that I’m passionate about and that I’d like to share with the world, and yet this is a bit difficult for me to come up with. I have some ideas:
Idea 1: Taylor Swift Albums: Since there are about 10-12 passion blog posts (I’m not actually sure the number) and there are ten Taylor Swift albums (not including re-records), this would be a good option for me as a Swiftie. I could go through each album and highlight the best and worst songs on the album, the overall vibe, the context of the album, and the impact on her career and the music industry. This could help go through all of the stages of her career as she has risen to become one of the most successful musicians of all time. This is also something I feel I could write a lot about since I have been listening to her music since her debut.
Idea 2: Women’s Reproductive Rights: This one is a bit more serious than my first idea but still something I’m passionate about. I have done a lot of research in the past about reproductive rights, especially following the overturn of Roe v Wade, and could use this space as a platform to share my knowledge on these topics- including abortion access, bans, restrictions, birth control, and more. I am also enrolled in a Women and Gender Studies class this semester so I could use information from that class as well to enhance my understanding. While this is a more controversial topic depending on who you’re talking to, it is still something I feel I could talk a lot about and create a lot of valuable content on, which is the purpose of these assignments.
Idea 3: Barbie Movie Reviews: This one is also very unserious, but growing up I loved animated Barbie films and continue to watch them as comfort movies to this day. A lot of them still contain important messages, funny one-liners, and some of the best music. My sister and I reference these movies all the time and this is actually a very widespread experience among Gen Z. I think these posts would be very relatable and nostalgic and would allow me to delve into my childhood experiences. I think as a college freshman this would be refreshing and could be a good opportunity for me to use my knowledge on this topic for something actually useful!
Hi I’m Rachel, a first-year student at Penn State. I enjoy going out with friends, shopping, singing, and writing my thoughts, of course. Thank you for visiting my blog page where I will be posting my RCL and Passion blogs weekly!