Jaline McCallum

English 21001

Argumentative paper Shaowen Liang: Rhetorical Analysis of the Eiffel tower

While reading Shaowen’s paper, it is evident that she spent time going over the Eiffel tower and all the devices being used. Some of the devices she mentions is structuralism, symbolism, sarcasm, and many more. She mostly zones in on different motifs in Eiffel Tower that show sarcasm.

The first example she gives is when Barthes describes the tower as a “sign of visual pleasure that is self-sufficient and serves no purpose beyond.” She goes on to discuss that his wry humor and sarcasm allow her to ponder the celebration of popular culture. Iagree with her connecting these two things because often, as humans, we celebrate things that are popular without actually taking the time to learn or know more about them. She connects an example to Elon Musks’ former partner, Grimes, who was tired of paparazzi following and stalking her every move. She decided to take out a book about communism and read it in public, and the paparazzi just published the picture without making sure and asking if she actually believed in communism. She did it as a prank on the paparazzi and this just proves how people don’t take the time to actually hear the whole story and just take something they see and run with it in popular culture. So I agree with how she relates this back to Barthes Eiffel Tower as people just see the Eiffel Tower as this amazing attraction because it was deemed one by society when in actuality, it’s not all that special. That’s how I feel living in New York City, another tourist attraction, and people come from all across the world to visit Time Square when to me and many of my peers, Time Square is not that important. People only visit it because it associates itself as a staple of Nyc. Overall I agree with Shaowens rhetorical analysis paper and I believe she did a great job on this assignment

Jaline McCallum
English 2100

Psychological Thrillers: The Rhetoric of Attractive Males

What’s your favorite serial killer? Seems strange of me to ask a question like this. No serial killer should be anyone’s favorite. That doesn’t seem to be the case in society. Killers are glorified, sexualized, and praised even if they commit horrific acts. The purpose of this paper is to bring attention to the fact that men can often get away with being more by being attractive

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Psychological issues and people who had these issues were taboo and scary to people in the past. Now it is normalized and, at times, sexualized that they even made edits of serial killers in a romantic way on social media platforms. They are basically excusing the behavior they did
just for their good looks. The example I have of this was a TikTok video edit of Jeffery Dahmer with the Chris Brown song “ Under the influence” in the background. The lyrics contain, “You don’t know what you did, did to me, your body lightweight speaks to me” The edit contained Dahmer pushing his hair back in slow motion. We shouldn’t be portraying someone who killed so many majority black and brown people in a sexual way. If Dahmer wasn’t a conventionally attractive white man, he wouldn’t have gotten this praise or “fan club” because people would
have been focusing on his crimes, not his face. Another example of a source used was another TikTok video which showed the killer Ted Bundy and the press interviewed the female public, and many of the girls were “fascinated” by him or didn’t believe he committed these crimes.
When in fact, he did, and one of the reasons Bundy was able to lure the girls he killed was that he looked good. It’s a sad fact to say that he used his looks to kill women, and even after, his looks aided in people believing he wouldn’t kill. Often if a guy looks good or fits the female gaze,
if they do something bad, it is overlooked. I can relate this rhetoric of attractive males to Fantomina. This relates because she kept overlooking the poor actions Beau did to her because he most likely was easy on the eyes. If he wasn’t that good-looking, she wouldn’t have done all
the crazy things she did, like change her identity multiple times for him. When creating psychological thriller shows/movies, they most likely make the person attractive to appease the viewers. Examples of this is Joe from the show YOU, where the main character Joe kills multiple
people to get to the person he is in love and obsessed with; they chose Penn Badgley to play this character, whos an attractive actor. Because of this, viewers often root for Joe, overlooking the bad things he did and continues to do because of the attractive actor. I’ve even caught
myself doing this, and we sometimes can’t even help it. This is how directors of these shows and movies get us hooked because we hone in on the attractiveness. All in all, it’s important to take into account of the rhetoric that happens all around us but specifically the rhetoric of
attractive males in psychological thrillers

Who is Jaline?

9/14/2022

    What did the shy pebble wish? … Just that she be a little boulder. Get it? Well, that basically sums up how I am. The girl who was so confident and extroverted made friends easily, and as I grew up became so shy and even developed social anxiety. So, where did this all begin? Well, let’s backtrack some years to when I was in elementary.


     I would have described myself as extroverted, always going up to people to make friends. Growing up with a single mother and being an only child, it often felt very lonely in the house so making friends in school was something that I went out of my way to do. Somewhere a long the way, the outgoing Jaline diminished. I cared about what people thought and I became more self-conscious. Maybe that’s just how it is to grow up. Now, as the 19-year-old I am, I am more of a listener than a talker around my friends. I’ve become more of an observant person. From outsiders looking in I probably look like a standoffish person who judges others, but I am simply just shy and scared of rejection. It’s often difficult for me to make doctor appointments or be on the phone with someone I don’t know. I don't like confrontation so I try my best to stray away from that as much as possible. I feel this might have come from when I was in middle school and I used to get bullied, it really messed with my self-esteem that I even had to see a psychologist. Imagine this. A girl being friends with you. All fun and games. All of a sudden she turns everyone against you. She befriends you again just to do the process all over again. I’m a nice person so I give people so many chances but it takes a toll on my psyche. Over the years I’ve become more introverted to avoid that feeling again. It’s funny how I want to be a child psychologist but I had problems talking about my feelings to others. I feel it is important as a soon-to-be child psychologist to open up about myself and go into my psyche to find the root of my personality. Once people get passed the shyness Im described as empathetic, funny, and kind of talkative which I don’t think people expect at first. If someone was to put me in a room with people, I don’t make the first move to introduce myself, I wait for people to come to me. As I’m getting older and more Into my college years I'm trying to break out of that shell and make the first move. I’m realizing more and more it doesn’t matter what people think of me. I also feel it’s important for me to evaluate myself and what shapes me because I should view myself as important as well as everyone else. So who am I? Well, I’m shy but also talkative once you get to know me, an empathetic and caring person, and a girl just figuring out life and managing it one step at a time.

Jaline McCallum

Hello, my name is Jaline McCallum, and I am a sophomore at CCNY. This Semester, I was able to see myself as a better writer. I’ve never felt like a strong writer, to begin with. I set myself up with goals this semester to keep improving and getting better. In this course, I’ve grown in able to find out rhetorical analysis and know that rhetoric exists everywhere. It’s in the magazines we read, the coins we use to pay for our daily activities, and on television. Basically everywhere. I was able to develop my strengths and weakness as a writer. Some strengths I feel I have is being able to explain myself well in my writing and being able to make connections that go together and make sense. A weakness I noticed is sometimes I hold back, and I can put out so much more from what’s in my head onto the paper. I feel like I have become more of a confident writer this semester as the professor let me know what certain things I need to fine-tune and improve on, and from that, it makes me more confident in myself that I can do better.

      An example I have of me improving myself as a writer is at the beginning of the semester, we had to write an essay about ourselves and basically write about “who are we?”. I had received a C on that assignment, and the feedback I got back was that I was holding myself back in my writing, and the professor wanted my voice to shine through. I took that feedback, and in the next couple of assignments, I improved my scores, showing my growth. I received an A plus on the exploratory research paper. That was my favorite paper to do as it was so interesting to unfold all these things that happen in our society, paired with rhetoric. My essay was about the rhetoric in Psychological thrillers and attractive men get away with anything just because they look good. It was very interesting diving into this topic and researching on sites like TikTok and tv shows to give examples of how we see this in day-to-day life.

   Overall I had fun writing this semester, which is a surprise to me because, in the past, writing was not my forte, but I enjoyed myself learning and growing as a person and a writer.