Rhetoric: October 2005 Archive Page

The uncanny valley itself is where dwell monsters, in the classic sense of the word. Frankenstein’s creation, the undead, the ingeniously twisted demons of animé and their inspirations from legend and myth, and indeed all the walking terrors and horrors of man’s imagining belong here. In essence, they tend to be warped funhouse-mirror images of humanity, and many if not most share one or both of a pair of common traits. --Dave Bryant --The Uncanny Valley

Bryant presents the work of Masahiro Mori, who noted that people like dolls and toys that represent humans, but that as these items start to look and behave more human, there is a sudden drop in the graph. [Correcting that last bit, which got cut off.]

Now, I'd have to look into Mori's work more closely to determine exactly what he was measuring, or why he chose to see a connection between these objects:

1. industrial robot (slightly positive)
   
2. android (more positive)
   
3. moving corpse (most negative)
   
4. prosthetic hand (somewhat negative)
   
5. handicapped person (neutral)
   
6. bunraku puppet (most positive so far)
   
7. unhealthy person (higher than the previous one)
   
8. healthy person (even higher)
   

When you list them in that order, you get a positive "emotional response" curve from the industrial robot to the andriod, and then you get the "uncanny valley" -- that is, the huge drop in the graph -- for "moving corpse," followed by an upward sweep towards "healthy person."

But what is it about a moving corpse that necessitates that it should be placed to the right of an android on the above scale? The "valley" disappears if you simply sort the items in a different order, like this:

1. moving corpse (lowest)
   
2. prosthetic hand
   
3. handicapped person (netural)
   
4. industrial robot
   
5. android
   
6. bunraku puppet
   
7. unhealthy person
   
8. healthy person (highest)
   

My point is not that Bryant is somehow being dishonest, or that Mori's work was somehow unscientific. But the choice to arrange objects in order to create a visual "ucanny valley" in the graph of emotional responses is a rhetorical device, designed to draw attention to a particular measurement and to control the context in which that measurement is presented.

Subject: The expository lecture as the principal means of instruction.

Inciter: The expository lecture is simply a talking textbook that has endured too long since the invention of printing.

Subject: The student-selected curriculum.

Inciter: According to the interest theory of value, the value of academic subjects is not intrinsic. It is bestowed on them by the interest that students bring to them. It follows that students should study only those subjects in which they are already interested.

Subject: The purpose of a college education.

Inciter: "If then a practical end must be assigned to a university course, I say that it is that of training good members of society. ... It aims ... at cultivating the public mind, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasms and fixed aims to popular aspirations, ... at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life." (John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University) --F. Champion Ward --Filling a Gap in the Doctoral Process (Chronicle)

Now that we're at the midpoint in the semester, I think my literature students have for the most part grasped the idea that a college lit course demands more than the ability to summarize plots, analyze characters, and apply the themes of a literary work to the student's own life. Their high school teachers praised those skills, and for students who haven't taken any lit since high school, getting them to make the shift is a challenge.

I first asked them to turn to close reading, so that they can practice supporting their claims with evidence from the texts, rather than details from their own lives or personal opinions about love, sin, gender, etc.

Yes, a paper on one possible meaning of the titular bird in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" makes a good topic, but such a paper isn't an argument unless it considers alternative views.

The students have submitted their rough drafts for their first big paper, and so far the papers have been very rough indeed -- but I expected that. It's a struggle to get students to collect a bunch of academic articles first, and then build an argument based on the sources they've been able to find, rather than having them write out the opinion they held before they conducted any research, then have them looking through the databases to "find quotes to support" the opinions to which they've already committed several pages of nicely-crafted prose.

Given that the rough draft is only worth a few measly percentage points, I've been pleased with the effort most students have put into it. Several students who got the draft "wrong" revised it after I gave them initial feedback, and submitted it along with a note saying they weren't asking for credit, they just wanted to know whether they were now closer to the right track.

I've warned students about the "bottom of page 3" problem, in which students who aren't quite sure what their argument is churn out three pages of general fluff before they hit on a really good idea, which they develop for half a page before tacking on a conclusion that basically says, "Therefore, this paper has [repeat introduction here]."

I wonder if these examples of "inciters" will be of use, as we try to move from a collection of interesting observations to a paper that has been written entirely in order to defend a particular thesis, so that the reader won't discover on page 4 what the paper is really about, but will rather be introduced to that controlling idea in the thesis paragraph, if not in the very title of the paper.

"But I do know that it's true," said the author of The Book of Virtues, "that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

Not the smoothest thought experiment ever ad-libbed by a lapsed academic opposed to utilitarian ethics. The firestorm ensued. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, declared himself "appalled." The Rev. Al Sharpton denounced Bennett's comments as "blatantly racist." The White House labeled them "not appropriate." NAACP President Bruce Gordon felt "personally offended." Rep. Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat, detected "a spirit of hate and division." Bennett, while not apologizing, had to resign under pressure from the educational company he co-founded.

It's hardly the first time a hypothetical upended a national political figure ? mere proximity to one sometimes does the job. --Carlin Romano --The Trouble With Hypotheticals (Chronicle)

An excellent analysis of a moment that really frustrated me.

Regardless of what you think of Bennett, to willfully ignore the entire context in which the quotation ensued in the desire to score points against the speaker requires either industrial-strength blinders, or deliberate malice.

--Teaching Carnival II is here! (Scribblingwoman)

A great collection of teaching links, highlighting what teachers who happen to blog are saying about their work.

I am also not claiming that IF should self-evidently be assimilated under the umbrella of “games,” but instead is being cruelly excluded. There is plenty of ambivalence about whether or not IF belongs in games on all sides, both from within the IF community and from without. As “fiction” that is experience by playing a “game file,” IF has ridden the “ludology v. narratology” line for decades. But still, IF might count as an indie game culture. It might. You could take that point of view on a vibrant and productive community of interactive artists toiling in relative obscurity. Or not. --Jeremy Douglass --IF and Indie Aesthetics in Games (WRT: Writer Response Theory)

While I see many flaws with the strategy of applying too much narrative/textual critical terminology to the study of computer games, just as there are problems with similarly applying the taxonomies of cinematography, I'm glad to find the occasional recognition that IF is a particular subgenre of games that invites (even requires) a narratological/textual approach.

Part of me flinches every time I hear the term "videogame." It seems so unnecessarily exclusionary.

If it's a videogame, then it's almost always to some degree an audiogame, isn't it? And a coordinationgame, and a spacial-perceptiongame, and a socialgame, and at least to some degree a kinetic-tactilegame, too.