Blog #3

Last Wednesday's activity of integrating something that I paraphrased from "The Corleone Chronicles" didn't
turn out to be too difficult for me. When the class was first given the assignment I wasn't sure how difficult it would prove, but I quickly found a part of the article that was suggesting an idea that I had already written about in my journal. Even though this particular assignment was easy, I don't think that paraphrasing academic writing will always go so smoothly, but in this particular instance I saw something I could paraphrase that I had already written about. My method for find what I wanted to paraphrase was easy enough. I simply hit ctrl + f and searched the document for the words "originality" and "genre", and with that I quickly found a few things that I could paraphrase. As I have said before, this particular assignment just went so smoothly I don't have anything to really complain about.

I also found that "The Corleone Chronicles" was an interesting and relatively easy read. I think the people that found it confusing just hadn't seen all of the Godfather trilogy and that resulted in their confusion; fortunately that wasn't an issue for me. When comparing the academic style of writing that made up "The Corleone Chronicles" to the more "popular" style of writing that Sara Vowell employs, I find that the academic style is much more straight forward and clearly written. Granted I may be a bit biased, since I really disliked Ms. Vowell's writing. My distaste for Ms. Vowell's writing aside, I generally prefer reading writing in the academic context, and I think I would also enjoy writing in that style once I become a bit better more accustomed/better at it.

Blog #2: Research

Blog #2: Research

     This past week I researched multiple music related things as well as directions to a friend's house. I tend to research music related things pretty often. For instance, I have been listening to a reggae band called SOJA and I wanted to know what SOJA stood for. So I took to Google and found that SOJA stands for Soliders of Jah Army. I researched directions this past weekend so I wouldn't get lost when trying meet up with a friend of mine. I would say that I do a fair bit of non-academic research on a weekly basis between researching bands and other miscellaneous things.

     When I set out to begin researching for my inquiry project I started out my researching process as I usually do, by inputting something into Google and seeing what comes up. I wanted to get some box office numbers for Western movies so that any claims I make in regards to profitability are based in fact opposed to opinion/assumption. My Google search yielded the website Box Office Mojo (boxofficemojo.com), an IMDb company. Once I found Box Office Mojo I just searched for information about a few Westerns to get some information about how much Westerns are grossing today, and about what sort of Westerns are bringing in the highest profit. This research wasn't hard to come by, granted I wasn't looking for something specific. 

     At this point I wouldn't say that conducting research for an academic purpose is much different than conducting research for personal endeavors. The only real difference that comes to mind is that I'm not instantly going to Wikipedia and I need to make sure the website that I am getting information from is trustworthy/legitimate.

Why have Westerns faded in popularity?

     My questions is "Why have Westerns faded in popularity?" A few decades ago the Western genre was a very popular genre in film. Numerous Western classics were spawned between the 1940's and the 1960's, but now new Western films hitting movie theaters are few in number. And while there have been a few good Western films that have been popular, such as True Grit, they are few and far between. I really want to know what about it is about the Western genre that has made it fade from popularity. It could have something to do the fact that people aren't interested in the old west, it could potentially have something to do with the gender roles that are often in such films, etc. I would also like to see if I can draw parallels to similar genres that are also fading away. To do this I am going to primarily need statistics about the films; I need to see things like box office numbers and things like that. I'm not entirely sure how I will research this at the moment, but I'm sure that once I begin my research everything will come together.

This is a post.