2501 How do people make these massive bursts of thought on pop culture subjects appear to have any semblance of structure or import at all??
I think a lot of it depends on precisely what…
…The Point…
…of what you’re writing really is. And don’t just discredit yourself by pigeonholing how the point is “faux-intellectual masturbation,” clearly you have something you want to say, but maybe a structure hasn’t presented itself because you’re not sure exactly what it is you’re proposing to tell other people about Evangelion. Think of how you could sum up what you wanted to say in one sentence… like, if I had to sum up Tim’s gargantuan Tokimeki Memorial video, I’d guess that, mayhaps, what he was potentially, probably hoping to communicate in parallel to the obvious point that “Tokimeki Memorial good,” was what he remarked on in this week’s episode, which was, paraphrasing here, “dating sims can be just as complex and serious as any other genre, my proof is Tokimeki Memorial.” Tim respects the audience enough to not frame the video as if he is trying to make that argument, although it’s certainly at the backbone of what it was all about. So I guess for you it becomes about figuring out what your primary objective with the essay is, if the primary objective is to say “Evangelion good,” or perhaps “Evangelion bad,” the next step would be to figure out why or in what way.
It’s been a while since I wrote Academically (I was in western art music academic) but by the time I was starting to actually become good at it, or, at least, once I stopped completely waffling about at it and enjoying it, I was becoming a fan of proposing new systems or tools of analysis, which I believed at least on some level were fulfilling some sort of purpose or need I thought existed, and then sorta takin’ it for a spin, thus justifying its potential adoption by anyone else who felt like it. How I came up with that depended on a lot of things but it did usually stem from “music I liked to listen to.” So I guess to create my own system or tool of analysis, usually I’d start from thinking about music I liked, pinpointing features about it I liked, trying to identify what I liked about it, and then seeing if there were any links I could find from there to other pieces or moments within a specific piece. Then if I could figure out something good enough I’d start throwing more examples at it and refining it based on what sorts of deficiencies came out of throwing more examples at it. Eventually I felt it was a new draft of a tool of analysis based on the idea that it could at least sort of explain all relevant examples I could think to throw at it.
And I guess how I went about writing papers in this style was to first propose a problem the tool meant to solve, or at least, the way in which it would reveal an at least a sort of observable phenomenon, go about the dirty work of explaining what I was looking for, how I was going to categorize everything, each category’s specific criteria, bringing up easy examples for each one, and then once that was done, put it through its paces by explaining how I might go about analyzing something either more difficult for the tool to process, or just on a larger scale.
I’m thinking of a particular paper I wrote rn about proposing a method of categorization of certain kinds of densely layered musical textures based on micro and mezzo rythmic/metrical structure and repetition. I called it stratification in reference to the geological use ’cause it was about I guess noting certain ways in which a texture could be layered in a way where all of the layers were distinct. If anyone wants to know what it had to say about the crucial differences in texture between this part of this well known piece, and the intro to this less known piece, even though they both probably sound like a whole lot of raucous noise, let me know. I had some other fun ones where I proposed a set of criteria for judging the political substance of opera based on political and artistic theories from Mao Zedong and the ideals set forth by the Eight Model Plays, and then I threw Sergei Prokofiev’s adaptation of War and Peace at it as well as considered it within the context of Prokofiev’s life, the specific megalomania1 inflicted on him by Soviet art committees, and the ideals of socialist realism. That one was REALLY fun, even though it was kind of blatantly about shit what I liked and wanted to talk about at classmates.
I dunno if that helps at all. It was a formula that worked for me quite well at least, and, you know, you can always sort of structure your writing based on something like that or in a sort of mode like that without making it too readily apparent, either. Or just do somethin’ lazy like mapping it to a dramatic structure that best suits your argument. If it helps you to write it and get it organized, it doesn’t really matter if barely anyone or even no one who reads it is going to pick up on the fact that you structured it based on the dramatic arc of the Epic of Gilgamesh or Gong’an crime fiction or your favourite Mondrian. If it helps you lay out your story or argument in a way that keeps people engaged, they won’t be engaged because the structure seems reminiscent of something else, they’ll be engaged because you tried to model your piece after something in an intentional way which will give it shape.
1 - extreme antisemitism2
2 - Not a joke! Prokofiev had a second wife (half his age at the time but never mind) who was Jewish and the whole “anti-formalism” thing is made up of a lot of antisemitism with extra steps.
