New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology » November 13th: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 3

November 13th: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 3

Plan for the Day

  • Critical Media Analysis Project
  • SEACS Conference at UNC Charlotte
    • February 21-22, 2025
    • Registration Funding available
    • New Deadline 12/06/2024
  • Charlotte Motor Speechway (5000-level group)
    • January 25th-26th
  • Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (Part 2 and 3)
  • ENGL/AMST 3050 “Science Fiction and American Culture”
    • Spring 2025
    • Tuesday/Thursday, 1:00pm-2:15pm
    • All seats filled

Personal Social Media Research

A few classes ago, I mentioned that you should consider following or viewing social media accounts you don’t agree with. Have you noticed anything? I started following a couple, and they really help explain not a totality but a prevailing feeling of many Trump supporters. In fact, tomorrow, I head out to a conference and will present on the rhetoric of moderate right-leaning Trump supporters. I think the academy needs to reassess its approach to first-year pedagogy in order to be better able to combat anti-intellectualism. We’re thinking to monolithically and missing out on the chance to disseminate knowledge more effectively.

Interestingly, many of us think we use social media too much (I include myself in this camp). Why?

Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, pp. 223-338

Let’s think about some more questions:

  • Now that you’ve finished the novel, ?
  • What’s April’s class and class markers?
    • Think back to this quotation from Misunderstaninding the Internet:
      “Young people who have rejected traditional party politics, who have moved away from class-based concerns to a radical politics of identity and who express political interests and hopes that are borderless have adopted the internet as an organising and campaigning tool” (p. 205).
    • Do you think April’s class or identity is stronger?
  • Gender/sexuality anyone?
  • What do we make of the president? How realistic is she based on the interactions she has with April?

Random quotes from the third third of the book:

  • p. 231: “The news media….During these rests it tries to make distant and vague threats seem up close and menacing in order to give you some reason to watch their advertisements.”
  • p. 232: “Seeing only the evidence that confirmed my point of view and not the evidence, right here in front of my eyes, that Carl was undeniably disruptive?”
  • p. 242: April gets stabbed–“‘This is what humanity is, solidarity in the face of fear. Hope in the face of desctruction.'”
  • p. 251: April is constantly flirting…
  • p. 255: April’s inheritance.
  • p. 268: “…when a radical extremist stabs someone in the back, the only person at fault is the radical extremist.”
  • p. 269: “I wanted to look serious and professional.”
  • p. 279: “…the Defenders….I honestly think that the vast majority of them would never condone this kind of action. But when the rhetoric is so inflammatory, so enraged.”
  • p. 287: “I also found myself thinking for the first time about the fact that I could and also would die someday.”
  • p. 288: “I was addicted to the attention and to the outrage and to the rush of being involved in something huge.”
  • p. 307: “By now, my audience was a couple million strong.”
    • p. 316: “…over ten million viewers.”
    • p. 319: “…more than 700 million viewers.”
    • p. 333: “…more than a billion simultaneous viewers.”
  • p. 321: “I honestly believe that is the human condition….If you pay attention, there is only one story that makes sense, and that is one in which humanity works together more ans more since we took over this planet.”
    • A rather anthropocentric assumption.

Andy Skampt takes over and mentions this about April: “…it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool.” Of course, aren’t we all just tools. Andy goes on to claim, “I don’t think any of us are blameless when we all, more and more often, see ourselves not as members of a culture but as weapons in a war” (p. 336).

Next Class

We’ll be discussing the rest of Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and then moving onto our last two readings: Angela McRobbie’s “Feminism, Postmodernism, and the ‘Real Me'” (Monday) and Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience” (Wednesday). I’ll also discuss writing strategies, so have an outline of your Critical Media Analysis Project–as a bare minimum, have the “concept of a plan” and the segment you’re interested in writing about.