Monday, February 6, 2012

Kairos and Stasis

Before applying kairos to my article analysis, I had to first comprehend the way the author uses kairos in the chosen article. At first, the presence of kairos was not very clear, but closer readings point to a major role. After exploring several films, the article saves its strongest example for last: Christopher Nolan's the Dark Knight. Without this example it would be much more difficult for the author to get his point across, and much of that has to do with how current the film is. This movie appeals to a modern audience more than any of the others, possibly more than all of them combined. The film's impact is still lingering, and even more so as audiences are anxiously awaiting Nolan's followup film releasing this year. Sure, A Beautiful Mind was a highly successful and accessible film, but it is now over ten years old. The author understood very well that he could capture audience attention by reintroducing a recent film. Aside from its young age, the Dark Knight was also one of the most successful movies of all time. The movie had a massive fan base, thus more people would potentially take interest in the article.

By applying the author's use of kairos to my own analysis, I better understand the desired audience. The significance of the audience is a no-brainer when it comes to rhetorical writing, and no analysis is complete without knowledge of intended audience. This did not make me rethink my goal for the assignment, if anything it simply strengthened my analysis. From what I've learned so far, kairos is a major part of public and professional contexts. Striking at the wrong moment can not only cause you to lose your audience, but you may even lose your job.

As far as stasis goes, I may not fully understand this term, but if stasis refers to "the stand", then it is very evident in my article. The subtext under the title reads "the way Hollywood portrays mental illness is just crazy"; nothing here is cryptic. Before the article even begins we know it is persuasive, and we know where the author stands. I believe this gives me an advantage when writing my analysis. Since the stasis is made clear before the first sentence, I can focus on how the author attempts to be persuasive.

2 comments:

Jessica Davies said...

Great comments about the application of Kairos and stasis in your piece. Kairos is obviously important because it can do a number of things. In your case, identifying the Kairotic element of the piece helped you find the intended audience for the work and showed you a bit about the relevance of the piece to the audience. Getting into stasis, understanding the conjecture and definition of a persuasive piece can be simple sometimes, but finding the quality has a lot to do with who it is important to, sending you back to the audience who you have already identified. Seems like you are well on your way. Good luck!

Stephanie said...

I think being able to do your presentation on Kairos really helped you understand the concept. You seem to have a great grasp on how the concept works and how it came into play for your rhetorical analysis. Stasis also proved to be a bit challenging for me to understand at first but for the most part now I understand what its purpose is and I find it quite useful. I like how you acknowledge that stasis is something that will only strengthen your paper, I definitely agree that an understanding of stasis can definitely leas one in the direction of a strong rhetorical analysis.