Module 3:Rhetorical Analysis
This story is about when Jenny Zhang met Mitski face to face. Ultimately I think the surface level purpose was for her to retell how that meeting went. But on a more personal level, I feel like the author’s purpose for writing was so that people could better understand Mitski. Even though these retellings might be through rose colored glasses or ANY type of positively warped lens, it gives insight as to who Mitski is a person. The target audience is anyone who has listened to Mitski or simply knows who she is and what type of music she makes. No, I take that back. The target audience is POC girls. Specifically Asian/Asian-American girls who listen to Mitski’s music. Because they are the only ones who can truly understand the subject matter of this conversation.
The story starts with Jenny saying “We met online because Mitski read my essay about growing up Asian, listening to Weezer, and waiting to be objectified by a man, thinking it would be the closest I’d ever get to being loved.” My guess is to establish not only a backstory but also Jenny’s ethos [her authority] to retell this conversation.The two talk about their bodies and how they don’t fit into white spaces which then segways into the topic of love, and how their experience with it has always been longing after it. Mitski’s song “Your Best American Girl” is all about how being a woman of color in America and trying to find true, genuine love feels nearly impossible. Because no one wants you for you, they want the stereotypical fantasy idea of you. Because POC girls are “not the moon… I’m not even a star”. When Mitski says things like “I just want to be a pretty girl who’s perfect.” and how Jenny states that “Soulmates are only for white people.” it establishes the pathos of it all.The way these statements resonate with me is insane. I hadn’t even read the whole thing and I was itching to talk about it. Because as a POC girl I know exactly what they are talking about. Not to the fullest extent, but still. But that’s all that pathos is, I don’t have to be an Asian/American girl to relate to these painful relizations. I just have to be a girl, who is also a minority, in America.
The comics included in the margins of the story remind me of the little comments I add to the margins of my notebooks. Things that relate to the main topic, maybe not in a traditional way, but they matter and to not include them would be leaving out vital information. They are a visual representation of the lyrics (and themes) in many of Mitski’s songs and therefore make the article multimodal.
The repetition of quotes from Mitski at the end of each segment of the story seem to be a last-ditch effort to send home the message of that particular topic. Because these things were said by Mitski and are being restated in big, bold, colorful letters, it gives them a sense of authenticity and value. I think this is where logos come into play. By restating them in an obvious yet cohesive way, it can make the reader think “okay, that was important I should pay attention to that. Another example of logos is the insertion of tweets from Mitski. Even if Jenny has already stated whatever is said in the tweet, the tweet is still provided as extra credentials for the reader.
Mitski talks about going on tour and how she is like a “Mom” to her bandmates, even though she is only twenty-five. She talks about interviews and how they never respect her privacy, how they always want more and expect her to provide them with information that she once was comfortable talking about but now isn’t. She says the public doesn’t see her as a person but instead they put her on a pedestal, “Everyone wants you to become a cohesive symbol and I think I spend 80 percent of my public life energy trying to acknowledge that it’s a complicated layered thing.” Mitski knows that as a non-white woman in the music industry, she doesn’t have the luxury of being mediocre if she wants to survive. Her music and skill has to be more than just “good” if she wants to make a sustainable living because there is no fallback plan for her like many of the white music artists have. There is no going back home to work at her parents company, no trust fund, nothing. She has to make it. She has to succeed.
I can honestly say that my expectations before reading this were not to relate to the subject matter as much as I did. Matter of fact, I didn’t expect I would relate to it at all. And yet I did, and I appreciate the fact that Jenny made this conversation for public consumption.
