Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-083: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • ENGL 2116 sec. 083 Major Assignments (Summer 2020)
      • Final Portfolio Requirements
      • Oral Presentations
    • June 11th: Continue with I, Robot
    • June 15th: Ethics and Perspective Discussion
      • Ethical Dilemmas for Homework
      • Ethical Dilemmas to Ponder
      • Mapping Our Personal Ethics
    • June 16th: More on Ethics
    • June 1st: Effective Documents for Users
    • June 2nd: Final Project and Research Discussion
      • Epistemology and Other Fun Research Ideas
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters Better
      • Research
    • June 3rd: Technology in a Social Context
    • June 8th: Information Design and Visuals
    • June 9th: Proposals, Marketing, and Rhetoric
    • May 18th: Introduction to the course
    • May 19th: Critical Technological Awareness
    • May 20th: Audience, Purpose, and General Introduction
    • May 21st: Résumé Stuff
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • May 25th: More Resume Stuff
    • May 26th: Plain Language and Prose Revision
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • May 27th: More on Plain Language
    • May 28th: Review Prose Revision
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • February 3rd: I’m in Love with the Shape of You(r Sentences)
    • January 20th: Introduction to the Course
    • January 27th: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Spring 2021)
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 4750-090 & ENGL 5050-092 Video Games & Culture
    • Assignments for Video Games & Culture
    • August 25th: Introduction to the Course
    • November 10th: Aggression & Addiction
    • November 3rd: Moral Panics and Health Risks
    • October 13th: Narrative, ludology, f(r)iction
    • October 20th: Serious Games
    • October 27: Risky Business?
    • October 6th: Hyperreality
    • September 1st: History of Video Games
    • September 22nd: Video Game Aesthetics
    • September 29th: (sub)Cultures and Video Games
    • September 8th: Defining Video Games and Critical Theory Introduction
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 13th: Umberto Eco & Jean Baudrillard
    • April 20th: Moving Forward on Theory
    • April 27th: Last Day of Class
    • April 6th: Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition
      • What is Postmodernism?
    • February 10th: St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
      • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • February 17th: Knoblauch on Magical and Ontological Rhetoric
    • February 24th: Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method
    • February 3rd: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 and 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • January 13th: Introduction to Class
    • January 27th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 16th: Friedrich Nietzsche
    • March 23rd: Mythologies and Meaning of Meaning (part 2)
    • March 30th: Derrida’s (refusal to have) Positions
    • March 9th: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213/HTAS 2100: Science, Technology, and Society
    • December 10th: Violence in Video Games
    • December 15th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • December 1st: COVID-19 facial covering rhetoric
    • December 3rd: COVID-19 Transmission and Pandemics
    • December 8th: 500-word Essay
    • November 10th: Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 12th: Frankenstein (1818) Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 17th: Frankenstein (1818) Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 19th: Frankenstein (1818) Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 3rd: Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 1-17
    • November 5th: Planet of the Apes (1964) Ch. 18-26
    • October 13th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • October 15th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • October 1st: The Golem at Large Introduction & Ch. 1
    • October 22nd: The Time Machine
    • October 29th: H.G. Wells and Adaptations
    • October 6th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology) Ch. 2
    • October 8th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 3 & 4
    • September 10th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • September 15th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • September 17th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • September 22nd: Collins & Pinch Ch. 5 & 6
    • September 24th: Collins & Pinch Ch. 7 & Conclusion
    • September 29th: Test 1
    • September 8th: Introduction to Class
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 280F
Phone: 704.687.0613
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020) » June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth

June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth

Overview

  • Essay #1 Draft is due by 11:00 pm tonight (on Canvas)
  • Firefly: Myth and Control

It took me a while to get around to Firefly. I believe I first saw it in 2013 or 2014, but I’d heard about it for quite a while. People used to say it’s the best science fiction show out there. No one was lukewarm about the show: if they saw it, they loved it. I do think it’s a great show, but I think the praise is a bit exaggerated. I posted such a remark on Facebook, and boy did I hear about it! The person even deleted my post. I do like the ideas in the show, but the actors and delivery are lacking. Anyway, the show only had one season, and they did a film after called Serenity. They did it right, and I recommend it. It would be best to watch the series first, but, you can go straight to the film.

I chose this particular episode because it gives you a sense of all the characters, and it has some heavy ideas–slavery, myth, being a man, religion–in 45 mins!


Terms for Discussion

  • Ideology: prevailing cultural/institutional attitudes, beliefs, norms, attributes, practices, and myths that are said to drive a society.
  • Hegemony: the ways or results of a dominant group’s (the hegemon) influence over other groups in a society or region. The dominant group dictates, consciously or unconsciously, how society must be structured and how other groups must “buy into” the structure. For example, the former Soviet Union was the hegemonic power influencing the communist countries of Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
  • Systemic: (adjective) pertaining to an entire system, institution, or object; something ‘systemic’ cannot be removed from the system.
  • Genre: literary or other textual products “with certain conventions and patterns that, through repetition, have become so familiar that [audiences] expect similar elements in the works of the same type” (Dick, p. 112).

Structuration Theory

Before getting into myth, I wanted to highlight a theory about control. What are the things that control us? We aren’t just controled be force–police, parents, politicians, etc.–we’re also controlled by ideology, but it’s often invisible, and we don’t reflect upon it. Mark Fisher claims that “Control only works if you are complicit with it” (22). I like to consider Anthony Giddens theory of structuration when I think of Fisher’s argument. Structuration theory proposes that humans operate under a pre-existing social structure, which controls actions. Citizens abide by and reproduce the overall structure, but this means they consent to the agents of social control that govern them. Consider the following quotations from Giddens:

  • “social structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution” (New Rules for Sociological Method 121).
  • “To examine the structuration of a social system is to examine the modes whereby that system, through the application of generative rules and resources is produced and reproduced in social interaction. Social systems, which are systems of social interaction, are not structures, although they necessarily have structures. There is no structure, in human social life, apart from the continuity of processes of structuration.” (Studies in Social and Political Theory 118)

Reflecting and advocating Giddens’s theory, James W. Messerschmidt summarizes that “structure both constrains and enables social action” (p. 77). I’ve mentioned that media reproduce ideology, normalizing it. Well, it was already normalized, but it’s impossible to determine whether or not the media (broadly) developed the ideology first or reflected the ideology. We don’t need to worry about a starting point, however, because we can identify instances where culture mediates rules, norms, repetitive behaviors, etc., we can claim that our actions are not solely individually motivated. We reproduce and justify the social system by operating within it.

Giddens’s theory hasn’t been debunked and, although there are criticisms of his initial theory, there are many expansions of his theory. Structuration theory is a useful interpretive lens for cultural studies because it allows us to focus on agents and rules. Simply put, our actions create our world; our interactions maintain or recreate the world. Why do we agents follow rules? Why are there rules? In view of our texts, do humans (or aliens or robots) have any agency, or do they just respond to rules (their code—coding, program language)?

Jaynestown and Myth

As you watch this episode, think about how myth is created. Below is a definition of myth:

  • Myth: Lillian Feder’s definition–“Myth is a narrative structure of two basic areas of unconscious experience which, of course, are related….In other words, myth is a form of racial [national, social, regional, etc.] history–a narrative distillation of the wishes and fears both of ourselves and the human race” (Dick, p. 188).
    “[myths] tap into our collective memory,” our unconscious.
  • “Myths are ultimate truths about life death, fate and nature, gods and humans” (Dick, p. 189).

What comment could this episode be making about myths? Why do you think we believe in the good of Robin Hood-type characters? How does this episode complicate our version of reality and history regarding “great” historical figures? At the end of the show, the captain (Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds) tells Jayne Cobb that probably “every man who’s had a statue built of them was some kind of [scoundrel].” I wonder if we can reflect on that in relation to Confederate Monuments…

Some Key Moments of the Episode

This episode would go along great with the novel Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, but that’s more Canadian than American, so I didn’t assign it (but, as usual, I encourage you to read it…reading good science fiction makes you a better person). The novel has the theme of indenturedness (or slavery), which is where the Jaynestown episode picks up, and the “mudders” are indentured workers (think minimum wage, and then think 1 Million times worse).

  • The shift boss tells the crew that they “pay the mudders next to nothing and pass the saving onto you.”
    • Here are some stories about Nike’s sweatshops circa 2000:
      • Two Cheers for Sweatshops (9/24/2000)
      • Nike accused of tolerating sweatshops (5/19/2001)
      • And Wikipedia even has a page devoted to it
  • Boss Higgins runs the town of Canton and tells Inara she can call him “Mr. Higgins” because only people he owns use the title “Boss” for him.
    • Think about the nature of work and undocumented workers taking on jobs Americans don’t want.
    • Simon tells the crew that the ancient Egyptians used to give the slaves beer “liquid bread” to keep them alive and sedate them from rebellion. {There has been more recent evidence that slaves were not the only workers building the Egyptian Pyramids.}
  • River tries to “fix” Shepard’s Bible, but he tells her the Bible doesn’t need fixing; faith is about believing in something.
    • This scene is an obvious foreshadowing of why the mudders need the “Hero of Canton.”
    • Mal tells Jayne that his statue (an idea) isn’t about him; the Robin Hood myth is something the mudders need because life is too terrible without hope.
  • The episode makes viewers reflect on rituals, which are habits, customs, practices that cultures share and pass on, but the members don’t always know where they started.
    • Inara’s “interaction” with Boss Higgins’s son is a critique of the “losing one’s virginity” ritual. However, afterwards, the son does become a man…exploring that might be a good Essay #2 topic.
    • What are some rituals that you have? Have you ever reflected on why?
  • Here’s Tor.com’s summary and critique of the episode

Also, here’s a goofy cartoon (two parts) that uses Nathan Fillion’s Captain Reynolds persona.

Future Stuff

Make sure you turn your Essay #1 Draft with outline in before 11:00 pm.

For the rest of the week, you’ll have the Preface, Introduction, and three short stories from William Gibson’s book Burning Chrome: “Johnny Mnemonic,” “New Rose,” and “Burning Chrome.” Of course, feel free to read all of the short stories in the book. Don’t forget to do your posts by Friday, June 7th. I hope to have feedback on your drafts by Friday, so you can revise and turn in the final Essay #1 on Monday, June 10th by 11:00 pm.


Works Cited

Dick, Bernard F. Anatomy of Film. (5th ed.). Bedford, 2005.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2009.

Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Polity Press, 1984.

Giddens, Anthony. New Rules for Sociological Method. Basic Books, 1976.

Giddens, Anthony. Studies in Social and Political Theory. Routledge, 2015.

Messerschmidt, James W. Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory. Rowman & Littlefield P, 1993.

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