At the start of the quarter, my ideal citizen was a high school girl. She was involved in many things, from cheerleading to volunteering. For books, she liked the classics and a few more modern books. Her music came all from the top 40 list. She lives in an affluent suburb and has a normal nuclear family and her parents are very successful. In short, I gave my ideal citizen all the advantages in life but she also tries to give back.

My new ideal citizen is one who has faced hardships. She will really know the kind of problems that face the world and she will use this knowledge to help her better it. She will not listen to popular music or watch popular shows because she doesn't fit the standard mold. She will not care what others think of her.

I changed my ideal citizen because I thought more about how normal does not mean ideal and often it isn't. The normal person doesn't really help the world much. My first ideal citizen would do some volunteering but I don't think she would cause any real long lasting change in the world. By not being normal, my new ideal citizen can really shake things and get things changed.

I've learned a lot about writing and research through this course. I had never written an analytical essay before like we had to. I've learned that rhetoric is a powerful force and I need to pay more attention to it otherwise, I will be blindly influenced. I can also use the rhetoric to my advantage. So in conclusion, we need to critically think about the issues that surround us, otherwise we will fall into the normal category and be mindless pawns. If we do not critically think, then we will never be able to effectively be activists.

Blog #4

Blog 3

For this assignment, I attended the OUAB movie night which showed Religulous. This movie is very critical of religion as the title implies since it combines religion and ridiculous. Bill Maher travels across the world, interviewing people and most of these people are those who believe in religion. He questions their faith and makes jokes about it.

Maher uses humor very effectively. He interviews people who usually end up saying or looking ridiculous. Some of the people that he interview come off as self absorbed idiots. I think that editing helps him accomplish this. This helps put the audience on his side with their laughter if they aren't offended. And even if an audience member is offended, different religions are questioned so even a staunch Christian or Muslim could find some humor. Maher also uses logic which is an easy target for a topic as faith based as religion. He also talks about his past in a church which establishes his credibility.

The ending appeals to fear. Images of wars and violence are shown as Maher says that religion will be responsible for our demise and that religion has always been our problem. This is very heavy handed and theatrical, which doesn't go with the tone of the rest of the movie. He seems like a preacher himself standing in the place that people believe Jesus will rise and the apocalypse will come. Like religion he doesn't provide much evidence that religion will be the undoing of the world. So I thought it was somewhat hypocritical. I was not convinced by the end of the movie. Even though I am not into religion, I don't think people are wrong for believing and that it will ruin the world. Maher did make valid points that religious fanaticism isn't right and that people do use religion in a way to control others but there are some positive aspects of religion he ignored.