Montanan Drag, What does it communicate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N--8BoAAo1M

I have always been fascinated by gender. I always wanted to wear makeup as a kid, so naturally Halloween was my favorite holiday.  The first time I dressed in drag I was 10, and I dressed as my grandmother to go to a Halloween party at my parents church.  As I was getting ready, I told my mom I wanted to  be a princess the year after, but she thought that would be taking things too far.  Perhaps she was right.  I went to the party, the other kids teased me endlessly and kept snatching my wig and running away. I was devastated! At such a young age, these kids already had a clear definition of gender norms, and my grandma outfit stuck out from the other boys in their superhero getups. In spite of this, my fascination with makeup and and feminine things continued throughout my childhood, and I always hid extra Halloween makeup in the bathroom and practiced painting my face after my parents went to sleep.  When I came into adulthood, doing drag was the natural progression of things.

Montana is certainly not the first place people think of when they think of Drag. Locals even,  are often surprised to find that there are drag shows in the area, as they aren’t a staple in nightlife here.  In spite of this, there are drag performers all over Montana who travel across the state to be on a stage.  None of us have booking fee’s and typically shows are held in the name of different charities, so Montanan drag performers certainly aren’t doing it for personal gain. Considering the cost of travel, cosmetics, and costuming, drag is one expensive hobby. With all of the hassle, I often find myself wondering why I put so much time and money into it for just a few minutes of stage time 4-5 times a year. More importantly, what does this desire to gender bend say about me and the other local performers?  

Drag is highly rhetorical, as I think all forms of performance are.  Without an audience with whom you have something to convey, performance cannot exist. This interaction between performer and audience is a communicative transaction. But what message is coming across in these transactions?  By doing these interviews I hoped to find out what performers were communicating to their audience and their motivation for doing so.  

What surprised me most was how similar the responses were.  Most of the interviewed performers focused on celebrating individuality and promoting equality.  I expected this, but I also expected more diversity in these responses. Personally, I’ve tried to model my myself after performance art, and there’s usually an underlying concept or theme I’m trying to convey to an audience.  Drag on the national level is often a commentary (more often than not a mockery) on pop culture and social norms. While none of the performers brought this intention up in their interviews, I think this is still evident in their drag performance.  By taking popular media and filtering it through our rhetorical mindset, we become farcical celebrities for the night, which allows us to act as or poke fun at the entertainment industry. I think the reason most performers focused on the social implications of drag rather than their artistic processes behind it, is because Montana has a lot of growing to do in terms of cultural diversity, and we’re all trying to make it a more inclusive place to live.

Several of the responses in the video bring up exposing the community to non-gender norms or gender fluidity and the like, and I cannot stress the importance of this enough!  To me, this is one of the greatest messages drag performers can send to an audience.  By crossing over the gender binary, we show the community that it’s okay to not fit within that binary. People who identify as transgender struggle tremendously to fit into society.  Finding work, having identification (that matches the gender they present as), and using public restrooms are all confusing hurdles for a trans person, not to mention the fear they experience of not being accepted by the community. Doing drag leads to education on these matters and we hope that makes makes our culture more accepting towards people of diverse gender.

The most unique interview I took was with Micah Harder.  His report of how performing as a man has helped him handle his aspergers in his real life, exemplifies how drag can help us become better people outside of the persona. Drag is a confidence builder.  Getting on a stage dressed as the opposite gender takes nerve, and by repeating that action, we build our confidence in situations outside of drag.  When you’re halfway through a number and your wig falls off, or you trip, or you forget the lyrics, you learn to just keep performing.  In  my experience, the audience always applauds a recovery, and it’s a method I’ve applied to my life out of drag. Pick yourself up when you fall down is such a cliche’, but applying it to a performance and seeing an instant positive reaction solidifies that advice and makes it easier to apply in your real life.

The Montanan drag scene is still in it’s infancy, but each show raises thousands for local charities, many of which are not LGBT related.  We aren’t only concerned about the LGBT community, because no matter how you identify we are all a part of the same community, whether you’re gay, straight, or transgender etc.  Our mission is to encourage diversity, and make Montana a beautiful place to live for all individuals, and maybe, if we give it time, kids can feel more confident dressing as their grandmothers for Halloween.

New Draft!

This is my rough draft, and rough might be putting it lightly.  I've never edited footage before, so I'll appreciate any advice/pointers.  I really struggled trying to take all of the clips and put them together in something that resembled a story.  Let me know what you think!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5e1nmTSujcR1llcGg4emxEczg/view?usp=sharing

A Really Rough Draft/Preview #rhetoricaldragqueenrealness

Please watch and comments and critique would be very helpful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zp8hVZ9wrs

Conflicting truths

Erin & Kelly,

I'm really intrigued by your notions of truth being different for every individual. Throughout your post and our discussion on Thursday, I kept being reminded of my relationship with my mom. We come from very different world views and our "truth" is typically quite different. She's hyper religious, and I'm well... crude and lewd, and quite homosexual, so we don't see eye to eye. We used to fight ALL THE TIME, but I've learned that no matter how hard I try to prove her wrong, I can't. She see's the world through the lens of her religion (her truth), and once I realized that, I was able to see how difficult parenting someone like me must have been for her. It's been a clash of the century. I think she's blinded by a wall of misplaced faith, and she thinks I'm a misguided soul that she needs to guide towards salvation. When it comes to cases of differing worldviews, you really do have to accept that you can't always change the truth of others.

Kelly posed the question of "How do we pinpoint ultimate truths?" And after thinking about it, I'm starting to wonder if there aren't any. What if truth beyond the general level doesn't exist? Once the mass majority of people agree on something, a truth can be considered general knowledge, but there often seem to be variances lying underneath them. For example, as Americans, the general public identifies murder as evil, so we put laws in place to discourage it. However, thanks to the death penalty, we have murdered many murderers for their crimes (I'm reminded of my mom saying "two wrongs don't make a right"). But when we murder murderers, most of us don't feel too bad about it, instead, many of us feel relieved that there is one less bad person on the planet. This complicates things further, as this makes the crime conditional, meaning we've made it okay to kill if the killing seems justified. Where do we draw the line between justice and murder? Now, the truth of "murder is wrong" is much more complex and open to interpretation, which is why the death penalty is still a controversial issue.

I've often thought about world peace and how easy everything would seem if we could all agree to disagree and try to get along. It seems so simple. However, it is this very subject of conflicting truths that renders such a thing impossible. We can't all get along and we never will. When it comes to deep, heart felt truths, the emotional connection to that truth often outweighs our accepting of others with different truths. Take any conflicting individuals on any hot button topic, and put them in a room together. Whether the topic is the death penalty, gay marriage, or abortion etc. the chances are that little understanding of the other's views will be accomplished. Instead what happens is each desperately trying to force the other to see their truth, typically to no fruition. At least, this is the truth the way I've seen it.

When do we believe something?

Kelly, the last few questions in your post are quite intriguing, “How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if everyone has different definitions in different situations for what counts as logical and credible in Truth? How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if people ultimately have different experiences which shape their values in-which pre-determines what they may be persuaded to believe in as true?”

Between reading those questions and thinking about our discussion in class on Tuesday that revolved around another equally perplexing question (“Is there a difference between what is believable and what should be believable?”) I am reminded of a story I recently read in the news and am even more perplexed.

So I apologize in advance if this doesn’t connect but please bear with me! The example I’m about to give is incredibly random, but hopefully I can tie it back in with this conversation. So, on Saturday (3/29) it was reported that two men just became the first same-sex inmates to ever marry each other in a British prison. But, what makes the story interesting is that both of the men are serving life in prison…for hate-crime murders against gay men. There is a lot of controversy surrounding their marriage, some people are taking the stance of “hey they’re in love, let them get married!” while others are saying this is some sick psychopathic plot that the men thought up in their spare time and another argument is that the men will try to use this as a ploy for early release from prison.

Now, in a situation like this what should I believe? Maybe they are actually in love, in which case – great, get married! But what if it is some sick backhanded plot with ulterior motives? How do I know what to believe? Of course in this scenario it is not pressing that I decide what to believe, because at the end of the day my opinion in the issue really doesn’t affect anything. But what about cases when it does matter? What if I am on jury duty for some court case and I am having trouble figuring out what to believe? Usually, anything backed up with scientific evidence or logos is pretty easy to believe. So, it is usually the cases that rely/play off of emotions that really blur the lines of believably?

It seems pretty easy to come to ‘general truths’ as Kelly mentioned when logos are involved. For example, Ebola has claimed 10,445 deaths according to the CDC. I’m going to assume that most people that we know will agree that Ebola is extremely contagious and severe. Those statements are based off of the facts. Easy-peasy. But what about when the facts begin to become less clear? What then? How does our 'gut' lead us to believe something?

Values & Persuasion

Hi Ashton,

“Perelman proves how interconnected rhetoric is with philosophy.”

I disagree. He doesn’t prove anything :). I think he’s just stating his narrative, which is different than our own narratives. And when you said that rhetoric that rhetoric isn’t simple, I agree to a point. I believe that how we define something depends on our lens and the values we harbor within that frame of mind. So even when your friend said that rhetoric is “how you argue,” I don’t think she’s wrong. I think she’s right in her way of thinking. Similar with Perelman, I don’t think he’s wrong either – He’s just stating his point of view.

Before reading the Perelman article I hated Socrates because he was anti-rhetoric, but when I read this I realized that the reason why I didn’t like Socrates was because he was acting out his values and his beliefs. He was stating his argument based on his values, and even when I felt he acted closed minded, he was just clashing against my personal views. The more I thought/realized that everyone’s point of view is fair/legit/correct, the easier it was for me to read and take in what the philosophical people had to say throughout the article.

I definitely thought it was interesting in class today when Kim talked about relating/connecting with other people. I think she said that if people don’t believe in what other people believe, then what would be the point of believing in it.  However, I wonder though, do we have a choice in what we believe? Can we really just throw away our values if they don’t relate with anyone else? And now I have another thought: If experience shapes our values and is influenced by who we interact with, can we really not have people in our lives (or the world even) who does not share our values and beliefs? I suppose we could if we were raised by gorillas on a deserted island, but somewhere there must have been someone who shared the same experience as us or at least a similar value, yes?

Another thing that caught my eye in this reading was how philosophy seemed to base their criteria for truth and how they persuade their audience with the concepts of ethos and logos. I wonder if according to them opinion is driven by pathos. I wonder if they think that rhetoric is driven by pathos and that is why they think it’s biased. I also wondered another thing: How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if everyone has different definitions in different situations for what counts as logical and credible in Truth? How can we pinpoint an ultimate Truth if people ultimately have different experiences which shape their values in-which pre-determines what they may be persuaded to believe in as true?   

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I was prepared to list me as next week's blog poster, but.... I guess this is our last required blog post round of the whole semester. I was kind of looking forward to posting to be honest, but oh well :) -- Let's finish strong guys! :)

Rational and Personal

Perelman proves how interconnected rhetoric is with philosophy. I think the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy is one that I would have never guessed exists until I took this course, which often feels like a philosophy class. It was funny, I was working on the synthesis paper a little while ago and a friend asked me to define rhetoric...it took forever because I could never settle on an answer. My friend responded something like, "It's not that hard, it's how you argue." (Before this class I would have said something like that too.) I responded, "It cannot be that simple!!!" I think that the reason that rhetoric is so complex is because it is rooted in our values...which is a very complex system. There is a lot more that goes into our arguments than evidence. Evidence is created, chosen, formulated by our narratives, who we are, and the values that shape our identity (kind of like Ramage claimed in ch. 2). Perelman claims, "The preeminent realm of argumentation, dialectic, and rhetoric is that in which values come into play" (160).

Last week's post I talked about binaries (yay!) in rhetoric being rational and imaginative, like of what Campbell was talking about. Perelman, I noticed, confirms that a large part of rhetoric is gaining both of the binaries, blending them in a way that appeals to an audience while supporting a claim. He claims that how we argue rationally is mathematical. "A hypothesis, to be accepted, must be supported by good reasons, recognized as such by other people, members of the same scientific community. The status of knowledge thus ceases to be impersonal because every scientific thought becomes a human one, i.e., fallible, situated in and subjected to controversy" (159). What I found interesting about his approach to argumentation is that he claims that it is mathematical, we form a hypothesis (we often use "thesis") and wrap evidence around it to persuade our audience, but also personal. Every scientific thought is rooted in our values. This quote shattered my conception of there being a rational binary as well as an personal one. Our rationality is formed by our personality, or values. Rhetoric is personal and rational at the same time. "In identifying this rhetoric with the general theory of persuasive discourse, which seeks to gain both the intellectual and the emotional adherence to any sort of audience, we affirm that every discourse which does not claim an impersonal validity belongs to rhetoric" (161-162).  I never have thought of rhetoric being both a rational and personal way of approaching argumentation.

Relating this back to Ramage's concepts of statsis, toolmin and Burke's Pentad, Perelman could claim that our values form our policies and evidence for our claim (which is a human thought rooted in values). I like thinking of purpose as motives, like Kelly brought up last week. Our motives are formed by our values and our motives guide how we form a claim and our evidence in supporting that claim is chosen by our values.