Project 4 for ENC 2135
Hello Blog viewers! Today I will be showcasing essentially all the work I have done in ENC over the past couple months, at my second semester here at Florida State University. ENC2135 delves into topics like reading, writing, and research, and essentially helps you out in the field that you choose to pursue.
Below, you will find three parts. The first part is the second project I worked on for this class. I already made a blog post about my first project (Project 1), so I’ll include refined Project 2 here. This one required me to analyze two artifacts and discuss the rhetorical choices that they made. This one I liked doing it, and it was overall very reminiscent of my days in the Advanced Placement Language and Literature classes. Good times! If you’re interested in Project 1, click here: https://noasresolve.blogspot.com/2024/11/downstream-public-policy-implementation.htm. With Project 1, this one most likely saw much more revision. I sent this one out to multiple individuals, including my environmental professor Dr. Mike Stukel. Everyone offered immense feedback, which I used to tweak my Project 1. That one I'm very proud of, but since I have already posted about that, I have Project 2 listed below.
Second, I needed to create two artifacts about the topic of climate change. Essentially, I needed to make two genres or mediums that were about climate change. Provided, I have a short-from social media video and a policy bill oriented. The policy bill is heavily based on Project 1.
Lastly, a simple reflective statement concerning my experience as a whole. This, I leave it for you to read.
PART ONE: PROJECT 2
Project 2: Confronting Climate Change: A Rhetorical Analysis of Banksy and Mark Maslin.
Noa Batista
Florida State University
ENC2135
Ifeoluwa Komolafe
October 31st, 2024
Introduction
Due to the disconnect between scientific understanding and climate-conscious action, a significant portion of climate change awareness relies heavily on how the message is delivered. Unfortunately, the idea of climate change itself often fails to raise immediate alarms, making the medium through which it is communicated crucial for motivating action. The artifacts analyzed here—Banksy's provocative artwork and Professor Mark Maslin’s pragmatic call for sustainability— highlight the contrasting views and approaches on the same issue. This underscores the importance of various media forms and their roles in communicating ideas effectively.
Artifact One Artist: Banksy
Banksy, the notorious street artist based out of England, is all too familiar with humanity’s disregard for our planet and inability to change. His entire art portfolio critiques humanity’s insistence on capitalism and the obsession with consumerism, being particularly emphasized via his Guerrilla-style art placement to make the general public confront uncomfortable truths about society within their daily lives on the street. This plays into the overall message too, as Banksy’s probity towards the human condition correlates strongly to how much he believes; his art style shows his willingness to break the law and his frustration with a system that puts profit over the planet. It is the pure bluntness and desire within his statements that act upon the audience that makes his argument seem more poignant.
Artifact One: Banky’s “I Don’t Believe in Global Warming”
Taking a look at the artifact with more emphasis on climate change, Banksy spray painted “I DON’T BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING” near the sea level of a canal in North London. This piece’s composition doesn’t necessarily seem to stand out until analyzing Banksy's past work ethic and his social commentary as it places a large emphasis on the reasoning as to why this work looks the way it does.
His elaborate work throughout his career can be described as illustrating harsh and blunt subject matters with nuanced and abstract mediums. For example, the piece Shop Until You Drop differs almost entirely in terms of how the message is communicated compared to the graffiti from the canal. It’s not inherently clear what Banksy is trying to get at when he illustrates a woman falling with a shopping cart. However, taking the art design and applying it to the human condition that Banksy often critiques reveals the elaborate approach he takes to discuss capitalism and corporate greed in his work. There’s an underlying message of something that isn’t immediately clear, which is largely represented within our daily lives as we shop and indulge ourselves within the system of capitalism; unbeknownst to the main issues that propagate with corporate greed, such as economic inequality, our obsession with product, or in the main piece above, the perils of consumerism. His work is reflective of our own lives as we go through every day unable to explicitly see the true issues that aren’t as apparent; rather getting hints and abstract notions that invite audiences to analyze a piece by Banksy and his overall message critically.
Because of the past seen with Banksy’s artwork and his commentary concerning abstract pieces, having a graffiti piece by him with simple lettering and forthright statements is odd as it employs the reverse medium to which we are used to with his art. The phrase “I don’t believe in global warming” requires little to no effort to employ and can be read by the audience and interpreted within a matter of seconds.
But this differentiation between his past work, or his ethos, and this current work offers a remedy for the overall argument he is trying to make. Because the graffiti is enacted in ways that could be deemed lazy, straightforward, or blunt, this all contributes to the message that Banksy is trying to point at. The issue of climate change and global warming isn’t hard to grasp, and as the science behind it becomes increasingly more explicit, we still see people acting as if nothing is ever happening. The issue still sees people taking the lazy option and simply denying the evidence despite all reasons not to. The art piece’s location is brilliant, as the rising sea level with the statement comments on the irrationality of certain statements of perspectives despite evidence that offers otherwise. Banksy’s contrast from his usual art form within this piece uses bluntness and irony to point at the main issue that comes with global warming. While sea levels rise, the ultimate issue that needs to be addressed is the inability to properly and critically think about the issue at hand. By employing similar thinking, Banksy mimics his critiques and writes the rash statement in place for their ignorance to truly divulge into the issue at hand.
Examining the composition of this piece offers insight into the rhetorical choices Banksy employs to convey his message even more powerfully than in some of his past work. The exigence for this piece alludes to the global effort to combat climate change. In 2009, the United Nations convened in Denmark to discuss the future of fossil fuel use and carbon emissions, a meeting that became known as the Copenhagen Summit. By the end of this conference, however, no progress had been made in establishing guidelines or plans for a hopeful future; instead, it left the world stage primed for continued climate change. Banksy’s piece comments on this event and further emphasizes his point by setting it along a canal in London. After learning of the UN's disappointing inaction, Banksy chose to respond with art on a canvas that directly faces the threat of sea level rise. The exigence and location of his piece highlight humanity’s denial of climate realities, reinforcing how inaction allows the devastating effects of climate change to continue. By choosing an area vulnerable to rising seas, Banksy makes his stance unmistakably clear: ignoring the facts changes nothing.
Lastly, the physical composition of the piece employs a multitude of other rhetorical devices. Taking a look at the color and style in which it was written, we see an orange/red color scheme, capitalized letters, and a larger font with the text “Global Warming.” The reddish paint could allude to the alarming nature of the issue, as this color is most often associated with emergency lights and sirens in which dire action is needed; showing the urgency of the issue entirely. Additionally, the larger font and capital letters pull in the audience's attention much stronger as capitalized letters are more often used in urgent situations. Soft or non-capital lettering wouldn’t have given off enough urgency as this piece needed to; as standard writing conventions could illicit a weak desire to focus on the issue. However, capital letters essentially scream at any oncoming pedestrians or individuals walking by; telling them to stop and listen to the words being yelled from the wall. The bold lettering of “Global Warming” at the end acts as the finishing touch, directly highlighting the issue while the rising seawater partially obscures some of the letters—visually linking the cause to the message itself. This irony is powerful, as Banksy uses his spray can to make it unmistakably clear that denial of this crisis is more widespread than many realize, prompting viewers to examine the writing on the wall, which is gradually overtaken by water.
Artifact Two Author: Professor Mark Maslin
Last summer, I was unable to see any of Banksy’s pieces while visiting London. However, I did visit the British Museum and pick up a copy of the book “How to Save Our Planet,” by Professor Mark Maslin while exiting through the gift shop. Mark Maslin is a Professor of Earth System Science at the University College of London and is a leading voice in the fight against climate change. His scientific work includes 200 publications, mostly focusing on environmental topics like climate change, ecology, and human evolution. There’s a reason I picked out this book, and why it caught my attention. Much like the Banksy piece, this book manages to employ the same, and much-needed, rhetoric associated when pointing to the issue of tackling climate change. “How to Save Our Planet: The Facts” is rightfully a calling and blunt statement, which uses tone to emphasize the need and dire condition our planet is in currently. However, this tone that the book employs on its front cover to allude to the issue at hand is complemented very well by the actual content of the book.
Artifact Two: How to Save Our Planet: The Facts
“Such is it’s urgency that we need to act now,” is one of the opening statements within the book. And the way that the book is written and its organization and structure also comment on the issue at hand, without even looking at the content of each page. Professor Maslin mentions that the structure of this book is written similarly to that of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” As opposed to a traditional book of outlying data and statistics regarding the eventual heating of our planet, Professor Maslin uses the line and simple comment structure of Sun Tzu’s masterpiece and applies it directly to the idea of climate change. “The Art of War” is written specifically to break down the complex topic of warfare into little bits and pieces that make it exceedingly digestible for anyone to read and implore in daily life. Taking warfare and outlying its main concepts of “attacking first” and “defense is key” into easily manageable statements have influenced Professor Maslin’s book on the fight against climate change.
By taking a complex topic like climate change and outlying in a similar fashion to that of Sun Tzu, it allows the topic to be received in a couple of ways. First, approaching the subject matter in a manner that is receptive to everyone allows the salience of the issue to be emphasized, showing just how crucial this topic is for everyone on planet Earth. Second, the ease of how it is written acts as a general convenience for the reader. Whether the reader wants to note how they can change their actions, or simply refer to the book in conversation, the general and critical statements on the future of our planet that of Banksy’s artwork while employing entirely different effects afterward.
Warfare and Climate change are not entirely different concepts. They’re both something that humanity has dealt with. Within both concepts, you’ll usually have two sides fighting and trying to defeat the other. Warfare has this more explicitly, but framing climate change as a fight not only calls to arms for average people to stand up and fight but makes it out as if this is something humanity can win. Sun Tzu is one of the most prominent military leaders of all time; allocating a specific framework seen within his book to defeat any obstacle in his way. Professor Maslin could argue that he is a prominent leader himself in the fight against climate change. Using this framework of comparing the fight against climate change to something humanity can tackle allows the audience of everyday people to feel not only motivated to fight the issue but also have more hope for the future. Although all hope seems lost, the book emphasizes the requirements to stop the worst of climate change isn’t science fiction, however is very reachable. Whether or not humanity focuses on the issue is a different problem.
Additionally, this book's entire argument refuses to harbor ideas of pathos; mainly relying on the idea of logos and ethos to apply scientific rhetoric to logic and the professor's credibility; which boosts willingness to cooperate from invidious as arguments based on emotion and are much easier to refute and apply to subjectivity. This can be seen throughout the book, whether the book describes climate change’s causation of sea level rise, or the economic GDP required to tackle the issue on the international stage, the book makes sure to highlight references and simply lays out the logic needed to save our planet. This is most definitely intentional as the strict and harsh reasoning behind logic needs to be applied ot a topic that is as politicized as climate change and bear through feelings and personal beliefs and cut straight to the facts.
Conclusion
Both artifacts employ a much more straightforward tactic to address the issue of climate change. While many studies and papers have been written on the issue, creating a medium that can be digested by the general public in vastly different mediums shows the necessity of spreading the word to the audience that needs it most. Whether it’s up on the side of a wall, or a simple guide on the critical nature of the issue, both artifacts slap you right in the face and encourage you to listen up and change your habits; because if we don’t, there’s nothing we can do.
Photos used (in order of presented):
https://banksyexplained.com/issue/graffiti-consumerism-and-capitalism/
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=413229591698194&set=a.107835175570972
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shop_Until_You_Drop_by_Banksy.JPG
https://pixels.com/featured/i-dont-believe-in-global-warming-banksy-street-art-my-banksy.html
PART 2: 2 ARTIFACTS.
Link to short-form social media video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BAg-uJnP5zG2nyFwqpSuYc86TjE5k769/view?usp=drive_link
Policy Bill: This is a multiple-page PDF file, so it cannot be placed. Here is the link to view it
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dxdxszHGVUtWgMzkazOOHSq39fs_XFaC/view?usp=sharing
PART 3: Final Reflection
Comments
Post a Comment