Blog Post #10

When beginning my final project for this class I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted to continue working on a social movement such as TWLOHA. Their goal of being able to save lives by promoting love to those who need it so they can see they can be helped inspired me. I instantly decided I would make a video project. It took a turn, however, when after some encouragement, I decided to make my use of storytelling about myself to carry out the exigence. My project begins with a discussion of the social reality behind suicide, depression, self-injury, and addiction and then continues to discuss how social reality has affected the self-perception of the people facing the struggles. After a brief description of each struggle, the video takes a turn. With this turn I begin my story of what occurred to me, of the incident that began the downfall of me myself. How I became depressed and the horrible thoughts that filled my mind. It then takes another turn when I begin showing how my friends noticed my depression and decided to change my perception, how they began giving me their time to show me that there was so much more to life than what I was thinking and how soon after, I was ready to accept the help of a therapist who could finish fixing the gaps that my friends could not. The video ends in an array of pictures of my accomplishments, the people who stood by me, and all the more people that stand by me since I finished therapy.

The exigence I am trying to address while doing my final project was similar to that of which To Write Love On Her Arms did. It is to not only promote awareness of suicide, self-injury, depression, and addiction but to let those facing these struggles know that there are people who care and are willing to help them.

In the case of my social movement, I am trying to carry out both persuasive functions of trying to change the social reality that has become in terms of the people dealing with depression, suicide, self-injury, and addiction to then be able to change the self-perception of the people dealing with those struggles. I hope to change the social reality formed that states these struggles are mental illnesses. By doing so I hope to be able to change the self-perceptions formed by the people facing these struggles after fear of rejection from society. I hope to change peoples’ minds from think that help is unattainable.

In order to accomplish my rhetorical goal, I have used the languaging strategy of storytelling. By beginning my video with the social reality and it’s affects on the self-perception of people, followed by an explanation of what suicide, depression, self-injury, and addiction all are, I am able to make those who are unaware realize the truth behind it all. With the bringing in of my own personal experiences, I believe myself to have been able to exhibit from a first person point of view what exactly people going through such struggles are feeling.

The genre I chose was a visual presentation. The way I decided to display this visual presentation was through a youtube video. The reason I chose to do a video to carry out my rhetorical message is because I consider myself to be a good video maker. Considering my own emotions I know how to introduce a subject then slowly lead into the more emotional parts until I hit the peak of my audience’s emotions to then bring them down. By the time they are brought down, all the emotions I wanted have been targeted and it gives them time to think with their heart rather with just their minds.