You get to choose one of the following cultural arenae to write about:
literature, film, video games, sports, song/musical artist, or food
Your issue summary is very simple this time, as it is in fact a persuasive argument
development. How simple? This simple:
What is the best [ work of literature, film, video game, athlete/team, song/musical
artist, or meal/dish ] ever and why?
You can certainly discuss ‘audience appreciation’ a little bit, but remember that this is a
major research essay assignment. What objective criteria will best make a case that
ANY reader would simply have to agree with?
Look, I will always say that pizza– good pizza– is simply the greatest and most perfect
food on Earth ever, period, end of story. But then I had a heart attack in January and I
don’t get to eat the same way I used to love to. I did find a way to make a great scratch
vegan pizza top with a chick pea-based lower sodium crust. Crispy flatbread style, but
AWESOME. I’m sure when I finally get around to making crust with my new pizza stone
and Italian pizza flour this Summer, I’ll be rocking again full force. That perfect
chewiness, the little hint of burnt starch from a nice oven char, the richness of deep
tomato and Italian spices (and garlic!) in that sauce, the classic simplicity of some fresh
basil… perfect. But what the hell does “classic simplicity” mean?! Nothing at all. It’s
clickbait personal voice foodie journaling nonsense. It makes no convincing case
whatsoever. It’s only useful if the reader already agrees and just wants to have their own
“I’m so great and here are my feelings and blabbing” word salad party lol. Are there
some clearer technical explications we could work on to actually explain something
about taste science, for example? Davis is a great place for that sort of work of course.
But seriously, it’s not perfect food if it could lead to major health problems, right? So
now we’re into all sorts of contrived contextual explications about diet and exercise,
moderation, etc. How is this perfect? What’s the meaning of ‘perfect’ here, all of a
sudden? Is a perfect food one that satisfies all necessary nutritional elements and does
not lead to any health problems? Is it the most cheaply and widely available food (the
possible beginnings of a food justice perfection, in other words)? Is it the one the most
people, statistically, say is their favorite? Is it Italian food? Chinese food (and what does
that mean in this Americanized context, for so many casual consumers?)? Is it Mexican
food (same questions again!)? Maybe French food, which had such influence on
judgments of quality and technique in the mid-20th century, right? Or is a
regional/ethnic/national cuisine not ever going to effectively account for the diverse
variations on perfection and excellence that emerge in specific food contexts and
foodways? What fun we’re having!
What are we going to base these claims on?
For example, you can’t make a successful case that Stephen Curry is the greatest
basketball player ever, even if you personally adore him and even if he has been very
impressive in the most recent years of the NBA. You could say he made the most three
pointers ever. That’s objectively, statistically true, right? It might not be forever, and in
fact stats say someone will probably pass him sooner than later in the new 3-ball spam
easy offense limited defense micro era (TV deal money BABY!). But it’s true now and
the current style of play seems custom made (almost suspiciously so) for he and his
fellow second-generation NBA player/star, Klay Thompson, to look impressive when
they would have been complete road kill pre-2015 (and were at various times when
objective conditions were in place now and then in recent years, such as ‘the bubble’ of
2020). But maybe you could make a clearer, stats- and historically-based case that his
team, the Warriors, are the best ever (especially if they win another championship,
right?). Still, you know that there would be a LOT of recency and local bias influencing
this passionate belief of yours and probably many of your friends. But once the old
Celtics, Lakers, and Bulls teams are laid out clearly, including their opponents for their
championships and the different rules systems in place for their wins, you have a far
more complex case to make. And the Spurs had a far tougher ‘era’ to deal with for their
longer-term championship window. Etc. The naysayers show up fast, right? But if you
like this topic, try to make the case.
Now look, the greatest baseball player I ever saw– and some of the major ‘analytics’
stats say he was #2 to only Babe Ruth– was Barry Bonds. Ruth also pitched
exceptionally well for part of his career, besides all the hitting, and he was at the center
of a league-historical formative team rivalry event in his move from the Red Sox to the
Yankees, but he was not the athlete Bonds was at all. Not even close. He was a ‘larger
than life’ cultural presence in his time though, for sure, and he was on arguably the
greatest single team in MLB-history, Those Damn Yankees way back when. Bonds
never won a single championship. But it’s a political crime that the dweeb media voters
are keeping him out of the Hall of Fame. But that “Hall of Fame” criterion is also a
dynamic, flawed, manipulable element, just like TV deals and betting lines/outcomes in
the NBA are. Bonds will go down as the ONLY 500 HR/500 SB player in history and he
was an exceptional defensive outfielder. No Giant after him has even been close. And
yet the team apparently won a bit more, somehow. And like some other powerful,
individuated, non-PR-friendly contemporary NBA players (James Harden, Allen Iverson,
etc.), writers hated him. Just incredible work to demean and get some sort of power
over the man. It’s been unreal. The world fawned over Mark McGwire- that big white
lumberjack- and fun, smiley Sammy Sosa during their big ‘record-breaking’ push that
one year (Roger Maris’s 61 HR is still the greatest HR total ever for some, though
Ruth’s 60 in fewer games- and by a far greater player- remains the benchmark for
others). They were juiced as hell though lol. But it sold tickets for a flagging MLB
product. See? Records may not be the best case for these sorts of claims, either!
Historical, cultural context suddenly complicates any strong superlative claim-making.
BUT, you have to! 🙂 You’ve got to make a convincing, supported claim about something
being THE BEST, and maybe you can think about how you’re going to explain your
criteria thanks to all of this complication I’ve introduced with these examples. You can
surely decode some of my own personal opinions and dislikes by the words I choose,
the voice and ‘pathos’ I employ/engage, and the various things I might include or leave
out. You’ve got to make a good case that keep disagreement in your readers under
control somehow, too! Have you adequately spoken to counterarguments and
respectfully incorporated them in your reasoning, such that ‘reasonable parties’ could
feel one of their own reactions was acknowledged and effectively overcome? That’s an
important part of great, sincere, and successful persuasive writing that is not simply
trying to move product (shovel shit)!
A way easier one that also has some of these fun recency/’sports talk’ noise politics to it
is whether or not Tom Brady is the greatest NFL QB ever. And hey, even if you hate this
guy personally because of his politics and personality (we just watched this great Netflix
documentary called White Hot, about the racism of the Abercrombie & Fitch brand, and
man is Tom Brady the most punchable A&F face in pro sports I can ever recall lol),
you’ve just GOT to admit his greatness, by the stats, the rings, the longevity, the whole
thing. Right? Prove it.
OK, sports are not our thing, all of us. Sorry. But they are a fabulous example of a
cultural realm in which these bombastic, passionate beliefs about greatness and
excellence are a core fabric of the topic. Food and literature and film- absolutely, the
same phenomenon occurs all the time! “That was the BEST meal I ever ate!” Maybe
you you were just full and it tasted great and someone else cooked it and you didn’t hurl
after. What’s the criterion for greatness?
OK, how about literature or film? I know a bit about both. When I teach them as
subjects, I focus on formal technique as a central basis for any claims about what the
work means or ‘does’. Too often, students are taught to or simply intuitively talk from
their personal feelings and experience (‘reader response’) or talk endlessly about the
author or director’s biography and ‘intention’ for the reader’s emotional and intellectual
experience. None of that proves a single thing without clear evidence of how the work
itself does anything at all. By the way, that film clip from the beginning of class is a great
example of maybe a ‘best ever’ candidate, Rear Window and maybe a ‘best ever’
director, Alfred Hitchcock. And it is definitely great example you already worked on of
how to make some points about meaning and effect using only the objective ‘data’ of a
scene. Poems, stories, novels, and plays work like that, too. But what would be the way
to explain anything about such works as ‘perfect’ or ‘best ever’? Would cultural impact
suddenly be an important aspect? Like, The Jungle led to major changes in the U.S.
meat industry that protected both the large immigrant laboring classes and the animals
cruelly and unhygienically slaughtered for American pork and beef addictions. Dickens’s
novels led to major social awareness in 19th c. London. But Harry Potter or even the
works of Stephen King have a way huger readership. And don’t even get me started on
the global, historical readership of major world religion texts like the Bible, right? What
do we mean here? Is it ‘best’ in terms of technique and art, or most influential in terms of
world history?
Huge huge range of claim grounds, right?
But then another problem: sure, Citizen Kane is probably still he greatest, most perfect
film ever in terms of narrative structure and overall film technique. And the story is an
all-time philosophical great (the value/significance of any one person’s life and the
disappointing irrelevance of wealth, fame, and power- the greatest ever poem,
“Ozymandias,” is another classic rendition of this timeless theme, he said
mischievously, with full knowledge of its immediate grounds for debate). But it’s a white
dude’s film. How can this be a perfect expression for our diverse, multicultural world?
Would we focus on how the guy sucked and no one cared about him or his
power/wealth in the end, and so here’s a great argument for undoing the white
patriarchal aristocracy and corporate world, etc. etc. etc.? Cool, but then again, crypto
bros and Silicon Valley biz freaks aren’t just white dudes any more. As we watched
another new miniseries that verges on real history docudrama, we did wonder why the
white chick, Elizabeth Holmes, got ratted out when she’s just running the same scams
on folks that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are (though decent products like Amazon and
Teslas help a bit, whereas Holmes’ product was pure horse shit that actually hurt folks–
Teslas run people over, Amazon abuses workers, I dunno I dunno I dunno).
See the problem? Ha, sorry:
You HAVE to determine how you will contend with counterpoints, and how broadly you
will range for considering them, and how you will control the specific grounds of YOUR
argument about the Greatest Ever. You have to be careful about the rampant editorial
voice/opinionated flourishes I peppered throughout my rants above. Or, if you have this
sort of strong writing voice, you have to wield it judiciously, with purpose (and
forethought!). Our opinion and free-wheeling writing alone won’t cut it, no matter how
engaging and fun my line of BS is here so far.
I don’t know anything about video games after about 1995, by the way, so Super Mario
Bros.– the ORIGINAL NES version– is the greatest ever, period, end of story.
5 points: 500 words minimum each. But NOT TO EXCEED 600 words—will not receive
credit if over word cap. These will be ‘pre-essays’ in some ways, requiring
1. a draft thesis
2. a summary body paragraph
3. a draft Introduction paragraph
4. at least five scholarly sources from your own research, listed alphabetically by author
last name, according to a formal references format of your choosing. As before, you will
indicate which you employ (APA, MLA, etc.) and will lose a full point for any mistakes on
that References list formatting.
