Commentaries are designed to keep a wide range of people interested. This is done in David Weigel’s “Thor: The Dark World The Crocodile Dundee II of superhero films—in a good way!” which describes the new Thor movie and provides Weigel’s opinions. Although listening to other’s ideas can become boring, Weigel does a great job of using powerful syntax, strong diction, and interesting details to keep his readers hooked.
Throughout this article sentence lengths vary keeping the mind engaged. Some sentences are short and to the point, “And then Thor.” must he say more. Keeping a sentence this choppy, especially for a first sentence, forces the reader to pay attention. The message is still unclear but interest is drawn just by stating that Thor came next. Other sentences are long and with out breaks, “ If the naïve God of Thunder was always going to be betrayed by Loki, better to do it while calling his evil brother “adopted” (he was!) and getting shot out a Helicarrier.” this creates a rolling effect; the reader is continual reading here to understand Weigel’s opinions. This is such a stark contrast to other short sentences that attention must be given, as was Weigel’s intention because this sentence is based off of his opinion.
Not only does the length matter when attracting a reader, the word choice that fills the sentences must fit too. Weigel uses strong descriptive words like “pomp” and “odious” making this commentary almost elevated. The only issue with calling this elevated diction is the multiple made up words such as “Norse-ish” and “Thor-iverse”
which leads to the conclusion that this may be informal diction. He uses words that are commonly used in conversations.
Although the rest is important one of the major skills that Weigel uses to keep readers entertained is detail He includes outside information to help connect what he has to say, writing “Iron Man, the 2008 film that launched the franchise, introduced a character who wasn’t terribly well-known outside the comic book shop, but it starred Robert Downey Jr. right when America needed him back.” to put the reader in the mind set of marvel. He also uses details from the movie like “The elvish assault on Asgard pits the elves’ spaceships against what appear to be magic, flying canoes armed with cannons, and elvish laser guns against … spears. “ to add to his point that this movie is a great sequel.
Through David Weigel’s talented use of syntax, diction, and details, this commentary is intended to entertain. The reader must continue on even though he writes solely from his own opinion. Once a writer perfects skills like these there work will never be boring.
Ana,
ReplyDeleteI think you have a pretty good response here! The point of course of the closed reading blog posts is to use three of our DIDLS literary techniques to prove what this opinionated article means, and I think you uses your techniques effectively. As far as the thesis or theme statement of the article, I didn't think it was exactly clear how you interpreted the article. By making your thesis statement a little clearer I think you could get a better idea and pieces of evidence for the syntax, details, and diction you are trying to use to prove what the article on the movie Thor really means. I loved the way you quoted certain evidence from the text to prove what you needed to. However, one thing that really stands out to me would be the ending of each of the paragraphs. Something I think would be a little helpful and make your message more clear would be to add just one more sentence after your last sentences of each paragraph, after finishing up your thesis, that ties the DIDLS literary technique DIRECTLY to your thesis to make your ideas just that much clearer. Overall, great job!
Ana,
ReplyDeleteOverall well done. I had some small things that need fixing. The organization is one of them, if you set it up so that the theme is first and then three separate paragraphs of the three DIDLS you chose it will be much clearer. You did a very nice job of using textual evidence in your post to help get your points across. I agree with Casey that if you added on to your last paragraph a little bit than it would tie everything together perfectly. The formatting seems to be off and that's why it is a bit confusing as well, with some of it being double spaced and the paragraphs being broken up incorrectly. It sounds like a lot of bad, I don't mean it that way. You did a very nice job of analyzing the article and understood the meaning clearly, you also showed how the author used the DIDLS effectively it would just be better with the organization fixed. Good Job!
This is some good work! I have picked Weigel in the past, and I agree with you that he is pretty funny yet a great writer. However, I think you need to better articulate the meaning of the text in your analysis. It is quite obvious that the writer is presenting his opinions, but what is significant about them? What is the effect/meaning of the techniques? I only caught a glimpse of this near the end of the third body paragraph, where you say that he thinks it's a good sequel. For next time, you might want to emphasize this further, tie each of your techniques back to this meaning, and mention it in your introduction and conclusion. Also, your discussion of diction did not really make much sense. I liked how you brought in great examples, but you did not elaborate enough on them, and I found your ideas to be quite contradictory. Is the diction formal, informal, or really a mix of the two? This post was pretty good, but just be careful to focus on meaning next time.
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