The original writing piece has to be 750 words, it must be based on your chosen style model and your original piece that you have produced, which is also 750 words.
Commentary for:
‘Dirty Dancing is the feminist manifesto we all need’ and ‘We all still need the Final Fantasy series in our lives’
My style model is in the genre of an opinion editorial from The Metro, a neutral broadsheet newspaper. Katy Brand
writes about ‘Dirty Dancing’, a film about forbidden love and coming of age story. This is a popular genre in the
entertainment industry but carries various stereotypes. I believe that a successful article should have an efficacious
headline, enlightening strapline and engaging opening; I found all of these in Brand’s article and recreated the lively
style of this genre in my own piece. Brand’s headline includes the determiner ‘all’ and first-person plural pronoun
‘we’, which is influential in personalising my writing and creating a friendly bond with reader. I headlined my article
“We all still need the Final Fantasy series in our lives” for similar reasons. I imitated Brand’s niche audience
(feminists) by only targeting the Final Fantasy fandom. This enabled me to use specific lexis like the nomenclature in
the game (e.g. Kupo), allowing the article to be presented in an entertaining manner. By mimicking the rhetorical
questions in Brand’s strapline, allowed me to direct the audience towards the topic of my article, but to also subtly
influence the audience towards my opinion. Similarly, I included the abstract noun ‘love’ as a sense of trust is gained
from the audience because it’s seen as a universal language but will be accessed by a range of diverse people.
Steve Neale’s 1980 genre theory on ‘repetition and difference’ had been taken into consideration whilst drafting.
Neale states that media forms must subvert convention enough to be considered unique and not just a clone of
something that exists, so I changed some conventions in my article. For example, Brand used adjectives such as
‘powerful’ and ‘extraordinary’ to emphasise the greatness of the film. I replicated this technique by forming a
semantic field of power. I specifically used the adjectives ‘behemoth’ ‘vigorous’ and ‘revolutionary’ as it connotes
masculinity within the game. This attract males as they are stereotypically known to repetitively enjoy patriarchal
dominance. I also used plosive alliteration ‘brilliant buster’ to emphasise the harshness and strengths of the series to
further emphasise its masculinity. Discourse is prominent as a recent study conducted by the Entertainment
Software Association stated that 46% of gamers are female. Knowing this, I deliberately created a binary opposition
as the audience would enjoy something new. Using Robin Lakoff’s deficit model, I used empty adjectives such as
‘beautiful’ and ‘lovely’ to connote femininity within the series. This is under the assumption that ‘gender is
performative’ as stated by Judith Butler.
Brand also varied the length of her sentences, but I chose to include several short sentences to exaggerate the
exciting elements of the game, with the intention of creating heightened tension and making my article feel
dramatic. For example, I divided a complex sentence into three short sentences: ‘Friendships are made. Friendships
are lost. That is all I can say.’ This was my attempt to make sure the reader is not intimidated with so much text, as it
disengages them. The simple grammatical structure reflects complex and synthesised ideas about the game, which I
think is suited to the target audience. For example, a person with limited knowledge about the series would need
more information to fill-in knowledge gaps. Therefore, there is an implicit assumption that the audience has some
contextual understanding prior to reading my piece. This increases the personal relationship with the reader as they
share similar interests and humour as me, which is effective in persuading them because I tried to make them trust
my judgements.
One of my aims was to focus on the representation of women. I attempt to challenge Laura Mulvey’s male gaze
theory, where she believes that the media is only viewed in a male’s perspective. Brand described the female lead by
saying she wears a “pink floaty dress” and the image used had her in a flirtatious positioning. I wanted to break
Brand’s ‘soft’ stereotype of women by including superlatives such as ‘greatest’ and ‘biggest’ to display that the
female characters have supremacy. However, I did imitate Brand’s use of bold font as I thought this would be
effective to use in my draft for emphasis. For example, by making ‘kill or be killed’ in bold, forms a challenge for the
reader, compelling them to play the series and to test their abilities.
Overall, my original writing piece clearly employs a range of language levels that were greatly influenced by Brand’s
style model. I replicated features such as syntax, lexis and graphology as I believed that they were most beneficial in
this genre, an opinion editorial. This is because it would allow me to convey my opinions in an engaging, informative
manner. However, breaking Brand’s stereotypes enabled me to use different grammar forms such as adjectives, and
short sentences, in attempt to attract my target audience more.
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