SPN

This speech should last at least, but no more than, 6-8 minutes. It is a requirement, and points will be deducted if you go over or under the time limit. In this speech, you will provide an analysis of a cultural artifact using public identity as a critical lens. Your goal in this speech is to explain to your audience the basis for your critical judgment about the artifact. The object you analyze should be well known or easily shown to your audience. Your analysis should focus on claims made by the artifact on the audience in terms of the issue of public identity (public memory). Additionally, your speech should inform us about the context of the artifact by presenting sufficient historical and cultural background for the audience. Ultimately, you should be presenting a clear and thoughtful argument about the object as something that can be understood as a material instance of rhetoric. This argument should not be limited to whether the object was merely aesthetic, functional, or in conversation with community standards, but should judge it according to the criteria of how it—intentionally or not—persuades someone to think, to act, or to believe in specific ways. Were the purposes of the object (assuming it had an intended purpose) fulfilled by its persuasive stance or contradicted? What were the consequences or potential impact of the artifact? Were the principles behind it valid?

This assignment will rely on logos. Logos is one of the rhetorical proofs that lead to judgment by the audience. Logos is based on evidence and reasoning, language, and structure. Your analysis, given in a speech, will demonstrate how you use criticism as a form of civic engagement. What you believe to be the persuasive dimensions of the cultural artifact will demonstrate that you know how to be a critic involved in public life, that you know how to do criticism that is engaged in civic matters, and that this functions in ways that are important for the good of the public.

Provide support for your speech by drawing on what others say about the artifact or about artifacts like it: include a minimum of six published sources cited orally in the speech, cited in the outline for your speech where you use them, and listed in the outline bibliography/Works Cited page. Four of the six sources must be scholarly (edited, peer-reviewed) publications.  Journalistic sources, news-aggregators, and general web pages are not scholarly sources, but they can be used to provide factual information, historical background, or pertinent cultural characteristics and uses. The artifact you analyze is not a source: it is the object of your analysis. The textbook for this course is not a source: it is your guide for preparing your speech. Remember, your purpose is not merely to provide facts in an informative speech, but to use these facts to argue persuasively for the perspective that you are taking. 

Explain your artifact in a way that shows how the artifact is persuasive -- what it is, how it establishes identity, expresses an ideology, and reinforces cultural values. (For the latter, you wouldn't outright say what values your artifact transmits; consider that Lincoln in his second inaugural address, for example, didn't literally say that he was going to express values of religion. He just did it by showing rather than telling.)  Make your speech relatable to your audience. Your citations are what give you ethos.

The speech is on rock band Nirvana’s album Nevermind. This speech is an analysis of an artifact representative of a culture, grunge has to be integrated in this case. I could see an entire body point just on grunge -- reminding your audience what it is/was, the Seattle scene, what Nirvana's role was in it. How grunge defined a whole generation (or vice versa)...what did Cobain's death mean for grunge?  There's a ton written on Cobain, the album itself, and the grunge scene, so you should have no problem with six sources. Show people you have something to say about this culture.

Some points I’ve already made that should be integrated into the speech are below:

The cover image is that of a naked baby reaching out to a dollar bill on a fish hook - this can be seen as human beings born greedy. This is shaped by the band’s view of President Reagan’s views on money and can be seen as negative. Also people at the time were not in favor of showing a naked baby on the cover of a rock album.

This music came along when Top 40 music boring, hair rock was all about the party scene and exploiting women. Mainstream rock music had gotten stale with no voice and no passion. Meanwhile the underground music scene was burgeoning with originality, with substance, with something more to say. While Nirvana wasn’t the only band at the time finding their audience it happened to be the one with the loudest, and mostly unclear, message. Which was there in the words but more so in the vibe of the music. Everywhere you looked they were there, every type of radio station, magazine, television, their music could be heard. Something was happening, quietly and almost at the same time out of the blue.

The late eighties and early nineties were a time of recovery after years of economic recession and there was a longing for change. The eighties shaped a generation of children who knew struggle but were disillusioned with the way their world worked. They felt lied to by the institutions they were brought up in, family, government, peers. All this led a very cynical and apathetic view of the world. But even within this negative perspective there was a longing for change, some small hope that things could get better, that this positivity was on the horizon as this generation slowly started to take control of their world. This music was part of that change, a representative of if that was ushered in behind a loud scream and catchy melodies.

The attitude and peoples sensibilities at the time were contrasting. Excitement and jubilation for something new, a spark to start something new. But an apathy that was also frothing underneath that sought to upend the forward thinking and positivity that was there.

Pop culture and the medium of the music video reshaped how we consumed music. Yes MTV had been around since 1981 but the video of Smells Like Teen Spirit changed how the music video was viewed. Now showcasing a power in the art of the video, people couldn’t get enough. As the nineties progressed more artists would craft art through a visual medium that merged both the bands music and their unique personalities that could be enjoyed on multiple levels.