Final Required Post

My favorite author, John Green, owns a blog. It gets a lot more views than mine. On said blog, he offers a Q and A section devoted to all of the books he’s written, including his most recent New York Time’s Bestseller and 2012’s Book of the Year, The Fault in Our Stars. There are two key distinctions John makes throughout his blog’s lengthy devotion to Q and A. First, that the book, and all of its characters, are a work of fiction. Second, that he will not disclose any information about what happens to said fictional characters in said fictional lives after the book is over. CORRECTION, he can’t disclose it, because he hasn’t envisioned it. Now this may seem like some kind of pathetic pass by an author who’s exhausted his book so much that he doesn’t have the heart to keep writing. Or it could be true. Consider this note that prefaces the novel.

“This is not so much an author’s note as an author’s reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.I appreciate your cooperation in this matter”

While I realize that The Fault in Our Stars was published just a short year ago, and is therefore not a work of classic literature and not relevant to a critical aspect of this senior exit project, the sentiments expressed by whom this book originated from– and by whom all books throughout the course of all time have originated from– could not be more relevant to sensationalism, to literature, and to life. Sensationalism is tribalism. It divides us from our ability to appreciate and listen to one another. When we have superfluously high expectations about what is interesting and what is attention-worthy, we disregard so much of the majesty that is the mundanity, monotony, everyday LIFE. Modern custom dictates that we respond to our friends keen observations with a casual and sarcastic “cool story bro” when those observations don’t involve us, or meet our standards. Sooner or later, we condition ourselves to dismiss valid cares and concerns. Fragments of genius are scattered and lost to the wind… felt by numb fingers and repeated by lame tongues.
And that’s where John Green comes in.
You see I disagree with John; I don’t believe The Fault in Our Stars is a piece of fiction. Nor do I believe that Augustus Waters, Margo Roth Spiegelman, Will Grayson, or Alaska Young are fictional people. They are real people because the sum of their parts– fragments of genius– are real. Like little Malcolm Crowe has a sixth sense for seeing the dead, John Green and authors everywhere have a sixth sense for hearing lost words and collecting fragments of lost people and piecing them together to form timeless literature. For years I tried to craft my own fiction by gluing random, fabricated instances together into what I thought would create some sort of “cool story.” But my binding was flimsy; my stories never held. It was only when I began reading the work of craftsmen such as Green and Chbosky and even Hawthorne that I was shown the true beauty of fiction. That it is genuine, and it is real.
Today I took my dog on a walk. And I thought my dog might lead me on some wild adventure, that while I was lackadaisically holding her leash and noticing things like distant rumble of the toll road and the grasp of a train whistle, she might pull me along on some path of destiny, some cross-roads of life. And in that way my day would have some meaning, and my life would be changed and I’d know everything happens for a reason. But that’s not how life is. Instead, I plodded along in my slipper-boots while my dog dabbled in some snow-bunker puddles. We walked until her pawprints filled the sidewalks and my shoes were soaked through. And I realized, that was pretty interesting too.
Sensationalizing breeds tribalism. It breeds disconnectedness, inflated expectations, and a general indifference to the miracle of others, and of life. It may sound cheesy– it may sound like an affirmation– and it may sound GROSSLY optimistic. But it isn’t. It’s just true.
When we de-sensationalize, we find content– and relevance– in everyday matters.
It’s sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

Green, John. “Questions about The Fault in Our Stars (SPOILERS!).” John Green RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.

Green, John, and Irene Vandervoort. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Dutton, 2012. Print.

The Sequestration Sensation

One of the pillars of today’s sensationalist culture is government and politics. Just as we see the the process by which the justice system wrongs Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter so too do we see the media portraying an ever-impending doom, first with the fiscal cliff and now with sequestration. Fear of these fast-approaching budget-cut deadlines have put the Americans into a frenzy, particularly those involved closely in political and economic spheres. Yet again it is possible to look past this angst and conflict  in order to see the real motive behind this kick-the-can mentality. It’s more drama and more hype that journalists and housewives alike can use to nourish their daily lives. Our need to feel centralized around a controversy is as if we are each micro-planets revolving around the same, magnitudinous sun. However despite all the warnings and threats of impending doom, the March 1st deadline has passed the hand of sequestration into play, and here we all stand. And according to AP Government and Politics professor Mr. Jim Schmidt, media hype is all it may shake out to be. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think [the sequester] will be as big a deal as people think. What might be best for us now just to wait back, and see what happens.” Mass media, however begs to differ, claiming (as one NBC article does) that the effects of the sequester won’t be instantaneous, but rather lull us into a sense of false security before hitting home. So in the meantime we sit back and watch events unfold, either with an idle curiosity or with manic apprehension. The choice is ours to make, and while I make no case for source bias, we must always consider our own motives for accepting the chatter that is constantly buzzing around TV and internet sets. Are we looking to leech of the omnipresent drama that eeks from society’s underbelly? Or are we taking note of important, critical facts? I seek to bring awareness by answering this question throughout many of my pursuits. And many times, I fear the former may be hijacking our sense of control. Let us not be tempted to satisfy our short attention spans with worthless (yet exhilarating) worry, and instead allow peace to redefine our sense of achievement and contentedness with life.

 

Curry, Tom. “Sequester Deadline Day Is Here, but the Effects Won’t Be Instantaneous.” NBC News. NBC Politics, 01 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 Mar. 2013.

Sensationalism Tackles Birth and the Harlem Shake

The truth is born much like a child is borne from her mother. It comes into the world: pure, innocent, untainted, yet just as soon as it has escaped from parted lips it is seized by prying eyes, and perspective never sees the truth quite the same way as it was upon conception. Pearl Prynne, daughter of Hester, was just short of immaculate on the day of her conception. So described was she as to be an infant “worthy to have been brought forth in Eden” with an aspect “imbued with a spell of infinite variety.” The child was radiant, clad in the custom needlework of her devoted mother, yet never was she simply one child from the moment she was beheld by more than her mother’s eyes. Because, as is said by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “in this child were many children.” In context Hawthorne simply provides this statement to convey the depth of Hester’s gifted child, but in the scope of sensationalism there is a lot more substance to this claim. Pearl, as so rightfully dubbed, was a treasure to her mother, but also a product of sin to the townspeople, an omen of ill fate to her father, and a creature so infested and overtaken by the scarlet letter her mother is plagued to wear for the rest of her days. The pure and impeccable nature of Pearl Prynne was dismantled into a hundred variations, each beholder seeing her as something different than she originally was. Hawthorne therefore makes a point about sensationalism through the story of Hester and her innocent baby girl. These characters serve as a metaphor for all the injustice that can be brought about by jumping to conclusions, by demonizing and dramaticizing, or by stretching truth in order to frabicate a more powerful, shocking, and ultimately hurtful message. And so is it with the truth, with a story, and with journalism. Just look at the recent craze people have created over the Harlem Shake. What starts out as one video turns into thousands, each unique and different than the first, with a rotating cast of characters and berserk costumes. At the heart the topic remains the same, but when our story is whispered through and reported to a multitude of ears, what really happened will never be as it truly was when first conceived. That being said, what’s created from a turn of phrase or truth isn’t always negative. Sometimes, creativity bequeaths a breathtaking moment. (or 31 seconds to be exact)

Thoughts on Literature and Publishing– the Other Side to Journalism

Publishing has died. Where are the people lost within their stories, walking around with their noses stuck in a book, blind to the rest of the world? Why do they no longer sneak a couple pages beneath the desk, or curl up in a little alcove, with a bean-bag chair and a woven blanket, prepared to hunker down for hours? I miss the dazed look behind their eyes, the invisible companions by their side. It is a comfort, I feel, that today’s children will never find. Is it a thing of the past? Am I trekking into a world in which there is no future, no illusive audience to receive the works I have dreamt of all my life? Will there, in five years, be a career to pursue in the arts or the imagination, because are not the movies doing the imagining for us, giving us an image that we have to perceive, rather than the self-created, the self-projected? We leave ourselves in our writing; there is no doubt; each word is a moment enraptured, each sentence a thought cemented.  Yet the reader too projects a piece of him or herself inside the novel written, connecting gaps in descriptions and sometimes superseding appearances to those of their own liking. It is the miracle of this deviance that when a pair of persons, conversing over a story the both of them have read, possess radically different interpretations of the same protagonist: one picturing his stature much broader, or his hair much darker than that of her leaner-and-fairer-visualizing counterpart. The two may then lapse into a heated argument regarding these differences, perhaps settling on a compromise of features or declaring no similarities at all, yet the point remains the same. By forming visual recreations of our favorite novels for us, cinema robs us- the masses- of this creative exercise. It steals our impressions and therefore our personal stake in the penmanship of Tolkien and Rowling and Collins, denying us a relationship to be formed with these staggering figures of literary influence, and diminishing our attachment to the literary world altogether. It is my personal opinion that in today’s culture there is less room than ever for the English and writing enthusiast, that the lucrative career lies with the majority bias- those who pursue science, technology, and mathematics as a means of interest. Unfortunately, I find myself on the outnumbered side of the spectrum, facing an ambition that may soon become obsolete, an infatuation that, I fear, has long since become outdated. It is startling to realize that reading is now associated as a hobby of my youth, that not only my peers but I, the one mourning the decline of this beloved pastime, has not picked up a book for leisure in some number of months. Life seems to have grown too fast-paced for this commitment, and I am one of the millions guilty of turning my back on Dashner and Zusak, Green, and all of my heroes. As I said, the future looks bleak. Oh-but how much easier it would be with the familiar presence of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Hazel and Augustus, Holden, and the Doorman, all by my side.

And I am not the only one to echo these sentiments. The recent deconstruction of the Border’s franchise seems to indicate that there is a shift in the way our stories are being told. Print is a dying a medium. We watch the news instead of reading the newspaper and now we carve our penmanship into the hollow vortex of cyberspace rather than to see our works make it onto the shelves and palpable documents. According to an article published by Melville House Co-operation, several Barnes and Noble superstores in major city hubs have shut down in the past month, including one each in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Manhattan and two in Dallas. Soon talk of jumping in and becoming lost in the pages of our favorite books will lose its meaning. Author Dennis Johnson proposes that this hit to the print industry will equally render electronic books, the two mediums engaging in a general war of attrition, where neither side looks to be the victor. This effect can be traced to the need for readers to scope out and circle the books they want to buy, like vultures sampling off the rotting paper carcass before making an online kill. The result? Literature takes a hit at all sides, leaving more room for tabloid news and sensationalized media to barage our senses.  Books have said to be called vacations. I’ll take that vacation now.

Johnson, Dennis. “Melville House Books.” Melville House Books. N.p., 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.

Do we Romanticize Drama?

Without a doubt this literary age and, frankly, the literature of centuries ago, has a way of dramatizing romance. From the tragically timed deaths of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the modern day classic love story, Nicholas Sparks’s The Notebook, people are drawn towards affairs that require a great deal of overcoming obstacles, odds, and sacrifice (sometimes all three at once). To paraphrase a timeless axiom, no one ever writes songs about the ones that come easy. In fact no one seems to write anything nowadays– books, screenplays, interviews– without a plot or subplot of lusty conflict. So is the Scarlet Letter just another tale of faithful, devoted paramours caught up in all the wrong (yet inherently convenient) circumstances? Or, rather, is it author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cry at society’s need to romanticize the drama the creeps into every facet of our waking lives?  Does not the town feed off of Hester’s predicament? The magistrates (who, I should clarify, are subject to the whims of matrons who take a “peculiar interest” in the “penal infliction”  of Hester Prynne) decide to make a public display of this young woman’s sins not because heinous nature of her crime but because the drama is enticing enough to draw the judgement and attention of a crowd. Likewise readers do not dub this fiction classic solely due to the undying devotion Hester has to keep her lover out of public shame as a testament to her love. There is an undeniable element of angst and excitement attached to this romance that keeps us rearing, a phenomena that is very telling of Western culture. Why must we sensationalize relationships that most often involve scandal and betrayal? We are so addicted the emotional rush we get from thriving in the presence of someone else’s dismay that we are naught to celebrate the peaceful, harmonious relationships that exist– those that, in actuality, leave us all the more satisfied. Hester’s acts of secrecy are indeed noble, but they are also a product infidelity  and (thus far) a commitment unrequited. When we learn to de-sensationalize, we can more justly appreciate the values of the truth, ease, and patience in an honest relationship.

First Response to Literature

Before we had social media, television, or even the radio to get our news across, people still managed to distort the truth through spoken word. It’s a chastised habit that we often associate with narrow-minded adolescent girls, yet it is a far more prevalent practice than we would allow ourselves to believe. That’s right; I’m talking about gossip. Dating all the way back to the 17th century realm of colonial Massachusetts, The Scarlet Letter had its fair share of town gossips. These women, known as the magistrates, were responsible for the orchestration and public humiliation of wayward girl Hester Prynne. As punishment for her infidelity, Hester is forced by these magistrates, the clergy, and the townspeople to be branded with a scarlet “A” emblazoned in golden thread on the bosom of her garments that she must wear for the rest of her days. This serves, for her enforcers, as an effective penance and reminder of her sin. Yet are Hester’s mistakes any less a sin than that of those who condemned her? Or our own for that matter? Hester was an innocent, breathtaking youth begrudged to a loveless marriage, yet her society overlooked this back story in favor of dramatization and a skewed sense of the word “news.” The case is no different today. Manti Te’o has been besmirched and slandered by the public’s undying need to spread headlines without first deriving fact, and as a result his reputation will be forever marked by the scarlet “A” of insensitive jokes and hauntingly empty kiss-cams. The publicity and mocking of an innocent man’s mistakes has fueled the unforgiving side of our society and again shed light on our sensationalist ways. Yet if we were to put ourselves in Te’o or Hester’s shoes, we would not be so quick to judge. In school we are taught that gossip should not be bounced from every neighbor’s ear to ear, but in the real world we assume that just because we saw something scrolling along the bottom of the TV or on the front page of our internet provider its okay to retweet and repeat. But let us be reminded, next time, of how our own blunders would look if they were made into front page “news.” We never truly know the effects of what our gossip brings until someone is harmed in the aftermath. I leave you with a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.

“In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang the rankles after it…”

“The scene [is] not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it.”

Topic Declaration

I will study the effects and evolution of sensationalism in media and journalism by looking at classic literary texts such as:

The Scarlet Letter 

Fahrenheit 451

The 42nd Parallel

The Reason Why I Want to Make a Difference in Journalism

Modern media is awash with sensationalism. From Facebook, to Twitter, to Tumblr, more and more people are becoming actively involved in the journalism process– whether they realize it or not. Posts and tweets alike are used to report accidents, weather, and poll opinions. Unfortunately though, it is a double-edged sword. The dramatization that is partial to social media often portrays a more negative picture than what is reality. People relay striking, shocking outbursts in order to gain followers and attract attention to their forums, rather than to actually report the facts. What results is a world plagued by scandal, tumult and tragedy, a world not representative of the promise it cultivates. And while it isn’t in our power to control all the negative events that occur within our lives, we always have control over our reaction. Through the study of journalism, we also have control over the delivery, giving us the ability to alter the connotation, to promote positivity in an atmosphere that can often seem bleak and limited to the public. I am particularly drawn to the sports facet of journalism for this very reason. Sensationalism abounds, the struggle is omnipresent, yet the story of triumph, of picking oneself up and coming back to make the tackle, is equally likely. Throughout my life I have been challenged by negativity, something I observed at a young age, destroying many of the people who I looked up to as a child, but who didn’t see the same good in themselves. Through these models I was (unintentionally) taught to look down upon myself– a self-esteem issue I have struggled with throughout much of my adolescence. Yet there have been several positive influences as well, those who have shared with me a means to fight that inner voice of doubt, quiet the questioning, and instead embrace confidence. Various outlets, including writing and sports, have contributed to my self expression, which is why I find passion in conveying the same message to others. By studying Sports Journalism, I believe I can make a noticeable difference in the way modern media is portrayed, central to the idea of triumph. This special interest is a subtle art, but one that is capable of giving means to a drastic change, and a cause that I look forward to tackling.