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Leress
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### Help with pointing out flaws in my paper so I can improve

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Post by Leress » Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:21 pm

Hey Denizens,
I need some help on my paper (the one I will show has already been graded), so I can get better at writing future ones.
Thanks to anyone who can give some critique, and hopefully to the level of that the Den is know for.
This for gender studies and it is a video reflection.
The documentary film Tough Guise 2 presents the argument that the ways that men and boys are taught culturally in America about masculinity are distorted, destructive, and rigidly defined behaviors. These taught behaviors are reinforced by the media as acceptable, and this causes them to create a persona that exemplifies this behavior and closely defend the persona out of fear of being rejected from society. The film also argues that the reasons for the persona and the persona itself should not exist, and a non destructive teaching of masculinity should be the one taught.
I did have a problem with some of the examples used to illustrate Jackson Katz's point. He used the clip from Rambo to talk about how, “Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo killing his way through Vietnam to do the job our feckless American government is incapable of doing by bringing our POWs home“ (Katz, Tough Guise 2), is actually a misrepresentation of what went on in that particular movie. The American government was not feckless,it was trying to cover it's own tail in the Vietnam conflict. Rambo used lethal violence only during times where he was rescuing someone or defending himself and others. The reason why he commits the violence is that the enemy was not there to negotiate and he did not want the prisoners to go through the torture that he went through by the same army.
Another movie example Katz presents is the movie Scarface with the quote, “So in the wildly popular remake of the 1932 gangster film 'Scarface,' starring Al Pacino, it’s all about the projection of toughness and the use of violence to achieve respect and success as a man.” (Katz, Tough Guise 2), this is actually a misrepresentation of what the film was about. This movie actually backs up Katz's point about the destructive nature of the tough guise and how if you don't measure up there would be consequences. Tony Montana is the bad guy, the message of the movie is not to do what Tony does in the movie. In the movie, he becomes disillusioned about what his is doing and it comes to a head when he messes up an assassination attempt because there were women and children at the location. This action sealed Tony's fate to the others, since it showed them that he was not tough enough and needed to be removed. Now the message of the movie has been ignored by most of the fans of the movie, so it not completely the movie's fault if the fans take an incomplete interpretation of the film. I think Katz is attributing what the fans take from the movie to the movie instead of what the film actually presents to make his case.
Another aspect that Katz did not really touch upon during the video was the role the media plays on how women or girls would treat a man or boy that doesn't measure up to the “ideal man”. Some films give the impression that if man is too nice to a woman she will just use or ignore him and go to or even back to the hyper-masculine guy like in the movie The Last American Virgin. It does not even have to be the case that the man who gets the woman is a “jerk” or “stereotypical jock”; he could be the main character like in a number of blaxploitation films. This brings in another force that pressures men and boys to use this persona in hopes of getting women or girls.
Even with my problems with some of the examples, the film is very good one and the arguments presented are for the most part very solid. I watched the previous Tough Guise in another class, and it was more all over the place. It was not making connections very well in its arguments. Tough Guise 2 is definitely more focused and Mr. Katz's closing speech cleared up a niggling question about where he wanted the culture of masculinity to go.
Link to a PDF of the rubric of the paper
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lnfynqttpcqj5 ... 9.pdf?dl=0
Last edited by Leress on Mon Mar 02, 2015 10:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.

> Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!

> Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!

> Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.

> I want him to tongue-punch my box.

]

> The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.

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Longes
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Post by Longes » Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:38 pm

You should get to the point by the end of your first paragraph. "Overview (Tough Guise is...). In this paper I will show/discuss x, y and z."
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Leress
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Post by Leress » Mon Mar 02, 2015 10:50 pm

> Longes wrote:You should get to the point by the end of your first paragraph. "Overview (Tough Guise is...). In this paper I will show/discuss x, y and z."

I would agree with you, but due to the rubric of the assignment it had to be placed later.

> Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!

> Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!

> Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.

> I want him to tongue-punch my box.

]

> The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.

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Josh_Kablack
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### Re: Help with pointing out flaws in my paper so I can improve

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Post by Josh_Kablack » Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:47 am

> Leress wrote:Hey Denizens,
> I need some help on my paper (the one I will show has already been graded), so I can get better at writing future ones.
> Thanks to anyone who can give some critique, and hopefully to the level of that the Den is know for.
> This for gender studies and it is a video reflection.

I don't actually know what those words mean when you put them together, but here goes:

> ]
> The documentary film Tough Guise 2 presents the argument that the ways that men and boys are taught culturally in America about masculinity are distorted, destructive, and rigidly defined behaviors.

Wouldn't those points have more impact if presented in a different order?

> These taught behaviors are reinforced by the media as acceptable, and this causes them

Who the fuck is "them" here?
By my understanding of grammar, it most likely refers back to "the media", but might also refer back to "behaviors", since that's the subject of your sentence. But I think you want it to refer back to the "men and boys" buried in that waffletastic prepositional clause of the last sentence.

> ... to create a persona that exemplifies this behavior and closely defend the persona out of fear of being rejected from society. The film also argues that the reasons for the persona and the persona itself should not exist, and a non destructive teaching of masculinity should be the one taught.

That italicized bit is Bulwar-Lytton worthy. Lemme break it down den-style.
Part I:
"I argue that the reasons for your smelly butt and your smelly butt should not exist."
That could be trimmed to just "I argue your smelly butt should not exist" to be punchier, or it could be split into two points more distinctly: "I'm not merely arguing your smelly butt should not exist; I'm arguing that the very reasons for your smelly butt's existence are bullshit"
Part II:
"and a non-Mearlsian edition of D&D should be the one published"
Is straight up detrimental use of passive voice. That should be active. It also probably should be a new sentence instead of Frankensteined onto the prior with a conjunction.

> I did have a problem with some of the examples used to illustrate Jackson Katz's point. He used the clip from Rambo to talk about how, “Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo killing his way through Vietnam to do the job our feckless American government is incapable of doing by bringing our POWs home“ (Katz, Tough Guise 2), is actually a misrepresentation of what went on in that particular movie. The American government was not feckless,it was trying to cover it's

Weird Al covered this one.

> own tail in the Vietnam conflict. Rambo used lethal violence only during times where he was rescuing someone or defending himself and others. The reason why he commits the violence is that the enemy was not there to negotiate and he did not want the prisoners to go through the torture that he went through by the same army.

How the fuck is a movie that was popular 30 years ago relevant to people who are still constructing their own gender identities today? Please Tell me that
Katz at least argues for inter-generational continuity or historical immutability or something?
But as to your writing; "not there to negotiate" is ambiguous. Being familiar with Rambo, I know what you mean. Yet that phrasing can be interpreted as either "not there" (at all) and therefore unavailable for negotiation and it could also be interpreted as "there for reasons other than negotiation". One describes the interaction between my union reps and my department heads, the other describes the interaction between pro wrestlers in the ring.
.....time's up, more tomorrow....
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Tue Mar 03, 2015 6:39 am, edited 4 times in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile » Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:40 am

Tough Guise 2 is not listed in IMDB, but the original came out in 1999. The sequel could reasonably be from somewhere around 2000-2005, which would make the 80s-era movies being discussed at least one decade less out of date, but it's still a pretty glaring flaw of the work that its emphasis is on such outdated material. What model of masculinity is being pushed by the Dark Knight, Transformers, and the Avengers? That's what's relevant now. Examining old movies is interesting as an academic exercise, but I'd expect a documentary film to be more current.
I'd have to see the documentary itself to know exactly what they're arguing, but your strikes against the movie seem unfair. Depending on how ideologically driven the class is (I have heard lots of terrible things about gender studies classes, but never from reliable sources, so I don't know), that might be the main problem. It's true that Rambo is sent in against an enemy that is unwilling to negotiate, but why is the enemy unwilling to negotiate? More specifically, why is the enemy never, ever willing to negotiate (or at least, not in good faith)? When's the last time you saw a movie in which a calm male diplomat talked his way out of a hostage situation with the empathy to understand his opponent and the steely nerves to use that understanding to bend their will with his silver tongue? It's a fair point to say that we've got a million Rambos reaching blockbuster audiences but only one TNG with a cult following in the last 30 years. On the other hand, maybe the movie doesn't actually make that point, and tries to paint Rambo's actions as unreasonable even within only the context of the one film itself, in which case yes it is bonkers.
As for Scarface, if the movie's fans have missed the point so hard, doesn't that suggest the movie may have failed to make the point properly? Note: I have not actually seen Scarface so I can't be sure this isn't a case of audiences being too dumb to catch even very clearly communicated messages, so that one may be entirely fair. It's not Scarface's fault if their deconstruction of violent masculinity was taken as a celebration of violent masculinity by idiots.
It's hard to comment on general structure because the grading rubric is asking for something pretty non-standard. My instinct is to say that the two sentences at the end of the first paragraph should be joined together into a proper thesis statement, but the format of this assignment doesn't resemble any of the essay formats they taught me in my ENG101 course, so I dunno. This is particularly bothersome because thesis statements tend to be big ugly run-on sentences that are bad form anytime you are not making a thesis statement.
Tip for passive voice: If the verb can be followed with "by zombies" and still make sense, it's passive voice. Unless you are writing a political speech, you should change that to active. Example:

> The film also argues that...a non destructive teaching of masculinity should be the one taught by zombies.

Last edited by Chamomile on Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:50 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Leress
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Post by Leress » Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:34 am

There really isn't a video online for the movie. It was produced in 2013.
Here is a transcript of the documentary:
http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/ ... pt_237.pdf

> Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!

> Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!

> Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.

> I want him to tongue-punch my box.

]

> The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.

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