Hannah-
Hannah, I liked your story. I felt like it was interesting to see how the girl thought she was cool and yet she tried to act cooler despite this. The boy complementing the girl and saving her is also pretty cool and I liked how you added in details such as the smell of his jacket.
Maggie-
Maggie, I like the simplicity of your story. Though you use no dialogue, you manage to convey a very surreal atmosphere that is like a waiting room of a hospital, with small talk and frantic personalities. I like how you convey cool by seeing through other people's fake faces and this is a common thread everybody is aware but rarely do you see this in the real world, which I think helped to add to the tone of the piece.
Rachel-
Rachel, I thought it was interesting that you pointed out bluntly what made her cool. I think that your story worked best when you led the reader to draw their own conclusions and left the girl a mystery. By having her ignore others and dismiss their opinions of her, I think that you made her seem like her own person, an individual, which is always cool. Adding in the copycats at the end was a nice touch to show the social impact she was having on the community and that others also thought she was cool.
Marco-
Marco, I found your story to really stand out amongst many of the ones I have read. Your more offensive look on what cool is helps to show that in fact, the narrator is the cool person, not those observed. By not selling out to some corporation to buy what's cool, you show that being true to who you are is cool. This is well supported by your talk of jocks and nerds and geeks, which I think was nice touch to show how cool is not one defined term and is different amongst different people.
Beatrice-
Beatrice, I found your story to be quite interesting. By having the girl simply isolate herself from everybody else, she has her individuality and that makes her much cooler than those around her who can't even work up the courage to talk to her. Music is very important here, because by ending and starting the story with music you show that Tatum is off in her own world, but a world of uncertainty and I think that this is an interesting thing to think about when one thinks of cool, how we can doubt ourselves or be unsure and still be cool. Good job.
Part 2- Analysis
Cool is not store bought, despite what the media would have you believe. Every story I read and even the one I wrote came to the realization that cool was in the way one acted, in their attitude. I think that this is a very key conclusion to come to, although it is a rather simple and obvious conclusion. If cool was truly store bought, why wasn't everybody cool? And if everybody did buy "cool" from the store, would it still be cool to have "cool"? No, cool is best when it comes from inside a person and they act like they don't care about anybody's opinion of themselves.
These stories all had another common theme amongst 4 of them, somewhat 5 depending on how you interpret Marco's story. This theme is that even if cool is not store bought, it can be enhanced. By having "cool" headphones or cool "jeans", somebody can have a "look" that makes them cooler. In the case of Hannah's story, the cool character fell into the category of bad boy/ladies man, even if not intentional. By having the "cool" character smooth talk and save the girl, he was also the typical hero of literature, saving the helpless damsel in distress. This is often seen as cool in many different representations. As for Rachel's story, by having the "cool" jeans and boots, the character was cool because she had copycats. While she was cool in addition to this, she was extra cool because of this.
I found it interesting that in none of the stories was anybody older cooler. I know the assignment was to discuss somebody around 17 years old who was cool, but nobody had any real interactions with older generations and none had anybody cool that was older than the protagonist. I think that while accidental, this does give insight in that people don't find older generations to be particularly cool. This is a pretty mainstream perspective and shows the effects of cool and the boundaries because nobody can maintain cool forever and nobody is cool in everybody's eyes, which connects to Marco's story about different groups of cool. All in all, cool is not all encompassing and is not eternal, but just something to fill the time between the actual meaningful activities of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment