Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [180]
By contrast, the writer of the following excerpt, from a paper comparing two films aimed at teenagers, settles for plugging in sources as answers and consequently does not pursue the questions implicit in her quotations.
In both films, the adults are one-dimensional caricatures, evil beings whose only goal in life is to make the kids’ lives a living hell. In Risky Business, director Paul Brickman’s solution to all of Joel’s problems is to have him hire a prostitute and then turn his house into a whorehouse. Of course, as one critic observes, “the prostitutes who make themselves available to his pimply faced buddies are all centerfold beauties: elegant, svelte, benign and unquestionably healthy (after all, what does V.D. have to do with prostitutes?)” (Gould 41)—not exactly a realistic or legal solution. Allan Moyle, the director of Pump Up the Volume, provides an equally unrealistic solution to Mark’s problem. According to David Denby, Moyle “offers self-expression as the cure to adolescent funk. Everyone should start his own radio station and talk about his feelings” (59). Like Brickman, Moyle offers solutions that are neither realistic nor legal.
This writer is having a hard time figuring out what to do with sources that offer well-phrased and seemingly accurate answers (such as “self-expression is the cure to adolescent funk”). She settles for the bland conclusion that films aimed at teenagers are not “realistic”—an observation that most readers would already recognize as true. But unlike the writer of the previous example, she does not ask herself, “If this is true, then what follows?” Some version of the So what? question might have led her to inquire how the illegality of the solutions is related to their unrealistic quality. So what, for example, that the main characters in both films are not marginalized as criminals and made to suffer for their illegal actions, but rather are celebrated as heroes? What different kinds of illegality do the two films apparently condone, and how might these be related to the different decades in which each film was produced? Rather than use her sources to think with, in order to clarify or complicate the issues, the writer has used them to confirm a fairly obvious generalization.
Strategy 5: Put Your Sources Into Conversation with One Another
Rather than limiting yourself to agreeing or disagreeing with your sources, aim for conversation with and among them. Although it is not wrong to agree or disagree with your sources, it is wrong to see these as your only possible moves. This practice of framing the discussion typically locates you either for or against some well-known point of view or frame of reference; it’s a way of sharing your assumptions with the reader. You introduce the source, in other words, to succinctly summarize a position that you plan to develop or challenge in a qualified way. This latter strategy—sometimes known as straw man, because you construct a “dummy” position specifically in order to knock it down—can stimulate you to formulate a point of view, especially if you are not accustomed to responding critically to sources.
As this boxing analogy suggests, however, setting up a straw man can be a dangerous game. If you do not fairly represent and put into context the straw man’s argument, you risk encouraging readers to dismiss your counterargument as a cheap shot and to dismiss you for being reductive. On the other hand, if you spend a great deal of time detailing the straw man’s position, you risk losing momentum in developing your own point of view.
In any case, if you are citing a source in order to frame the discussion, the more reasonable move is both to agree