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• Classic-Fiction

Step 2: Next, pose another interpretive possibility by finishing the sentence, “but it could also be (or is really) about Y.”

Step 3: It’s essential to repeat this process a number of times to provoke new, interpretive leaps. In effect, you are brainstorming alternative explanations for the same phenomenon.

Step 4: Choose what you think is the best formulation for Y, and write a paragraph or more explaining your choice.

Discussion This prompt is based on the conviction that understandings are rarely simple and overt. Completing the formula by supplying key terms for X and Y, writers get practice in making the implicit explicit and accepting the existence of multiple plausible meanings for something. “Seems to be about X” is especially useful when considering the rhetoric of a piece: its complex and various ways of targeting and appealing to an audience. It’s also useful for “reading against the grain”—seeking out what something is about that it probably does not know it’s about (see Chapter 5, Writing About Reading).

Note: Don’t be misled by our use of the word really in this formula (“Seems to be about X, is really about Y”) into thinking that there should be some single, hidden, right answer. Rather, the aim of the formula is to prompt you to think recursively, to come up, initially, with a range of landing sites for your interpretive leap, rather than just one.

Seems to Be About X …: An Example

A classic and highly successful television ad campaign for Nike Freestyle shoes contains 60 seconds of famous basketball players dribbling and passing and otherwise handling the ball in dexterous ways to the accompaniment of court noises and hip-hop music. The ad seems to be about X (basketball or shoes) but could also be about Y. Once you’ve made this assertion, a rapid-fire (brainstormed) list might follow in which you keep filling in the blanks (X and Y) with different possibilities. Alternatively, you might find that filling in the blanks (X and Y) leads to a more sustained exploration of a single point. This is your eventual goal, but doing a little brainstorming first would keep you from shutting down the interpretive process too soon.

Here is one version of a rapid-fire list, any item of which might be expanded:

Seems to be about basketball but is “really” about dance

Seems to be about selling shoes but is “really” about artistry

Seems to be about artistry but is “really” about selling shoes

Seems to be about basketball but is “really” about race

Seems to be about basketball but is “really” about the greater acceptance of black culture in American media and society

Seems to be about the greater acceptance of black culture in American media but is “really” about representing black basketball players as performing seals or freaks

Seems to be about individual expertise but is “really” about working as a group

Here is one version of a more sustained exploration of a single Seems-to-Be-About-X statement.

The Nike Freestyle commercial seems to be about basketball but is really about the greater acceptance of black culture in American media. Of course it is a shoe commercial and so aims to sell a product, but the same could be said about any commercial.

What makes the Nike commercial distinctive is its seeming embrace of African-American culture. The hip-hop sound track, for example, which coincides with the rhythmic dribbling of the basketball, places music and sport on a par, and the dexterity with which the players (actual NBA stars) move with the ball— moonwalking, doing 360s on it, balancing it on their fingers, heads, and backs—is nothing short of dance.

The intrinsic cool of the commercial suggests that Nike is targeting an audience of basketball lovers, not just African-Americans. If I am right, then it is selling blackness to white as well as black audiences. Of course, the idea that blacks are cooler than whites goes back at least as far as the early days of jazz and might be seen as its own strange form of prejudice…. In that case, maybe there is something