Miss Crazy

Warning: the following contains opinions that may not be shared by everyone. Educated arguments to these opinions as opposed to hurtful words are advised.

            Lately in my Language Arts class we have been watching a documentary called Miss Representation. It’s about how women are portrayed in the media. The claim is that women are seen in the media as *ahem* sluts and we all have to be beautiful and crazy thin. The documentary writers present some evidence such as personal stories, interviews with regular high school students, and grown-ups with degrees in journalism or psychology.

In my class, we watch a bit of the documentary and then pause it to point out rhetorical strategies. We point out the writers many claims, what sort of reasoning are they using (deductive or inductive), how the writers present the evidence, and how the presentation affects your opinion. Or at least we are supposed to be doing these things. We don’t because people get so hot over what the documentary is saying that class turns into a big debate. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I’m not saying they can’t talk about it but the class isn’t applying the terms. Well, some do but it’s only to try and connect a logical fallacy to what the documentary is trying to say so it seems false. Again, I know people want to give their opinions what seems like all the time but I’d rather get through the documentary. Get through it, look at all the claims, evidence, and the reasoning and then apply the terms to advance the skills I’m trying to learn. I want to get through all that, probably form my own opinion but keep it to myself, and do it all with minimal conflict. Well…that’s what I want but it’s absolutely not what will/did happen (we’re only fifteen minutes in ;-;).

What really irked me was when people started to question the people who got interviewed with degrees. The teacher showed a list of them and their reliability but people still questioned their authority. Sometimes it’s good to question an authority if you’re in search of the truth but these people clearly knew what they were talking about. I suppose what really upset me wasn’t how people kept returning to question the authority but the fact that people are so distrustful. It’s a sad world when people listen to something or someone but don’t believe them from the start. I guess it’s this distrust that makes people shut down to arguments that they don’t like. By shut down I mean people listen to an argument but they have no intention of considering the view of the other person as truthful in anyway. However, maybe they do consider some of it true but they don’t say so. I view arguing as a break down in clear communication. People just get upset or stressed and it just seems to lead to miscommunication. Now this is talking about the debating in my class not real debates.

*sigh* I really hate arguing and debating. It just upsets me when people get angry with each other and I know they’re not really angry but they seem angry. I guess everyone has their own way to release anger and stress. Like this post I just did which is really me ranting. Curses! It’s irony!

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