RA Prompts: The Disaster Artist

RA Prompts: The Disaster Artist
This assignment asks you to produce a thesis-driven analysis of two or more aspects of the rhetorical situation in an assigned text.
CHOSEN PROMPT: Tommy and Greg’s friendship sometimes drifts into territory that seems more like an intimate, romantic relationship. How are these moments and others in the book written in such a way as to provide commentary on the cultural idea of “bromance” at the time of the book’s publication?

ASPECTS OF RHETORICAL SITUATION: Text, Historical/Cultural Context, Message

-This prompt will require you to develop an argument that doesn’t just show how the book REFLECTS opinions or attitudes from society, but COMMENTS UPON them and ADDS TO them.

-Research may include sources that establish the cultural yardstick for “bromance.”
Your prompt can explore any aspects of the rhetorical situation, but should focus on how two or more aspects of the rhetorical situation work together. You might make an argument exploring, for example, how the text…

A. Transmits a certain message to a certain audience;

B. Transmits a message by engaging with an aspect of its historical/cultural context;

C. Transmits a certain message to a certain audience by engaging with an aspect of its historical cultural context.

D. Includes sections which play with ideas of genre/medium in a certain way in order to achieve a certain purpose.

E. Includes sections which, when read closely, contain literary devices that send a message OR appeal to an audience OR achieve a purpose.

F. Includes decisions about style and/or tone that concretely affect some other aspect of the rhetorical situation.

…and so on!

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For whichever prompt you choose, you’ll want to make sure that your argument discusses WHAT you see happening, HOW you see it operating, and (most importantly) WHY this is important, and/or WHAT the EFFECT of these rhetorical choices is! Your argument should, of course, be arguable.