Culture in 1984; The Other; & Creating a Cultural Setting

Coming Attractions: Wednesday we will be attending a Rights/Responsibilities assembly. Please be on time. Class starts at 8:05.

Bell Work: We will begin class reading a short article and responding to the essay in our journals. Throughout this course, we will encounter various texts and use a response technique such as brainstorming, freewriting, cave drawing, or mind mapping. Our goal is to strike something that causes us to create a written response in any genre of creative writing: a short story, a poem, a poem cycle, an essay, a memoir, a song, a film, a script, a comic, or any other written form.

Let's cover some of the important culture vocabulary we missed Thursday. See post and handout below for details. What hegemonic groups can we use to our advantage when selecting an audience for our writing? Let's discuss.

Group Work/Collaboration: After discussing and learning key vocabulary, each of you please take one of the 1984 questionnaire sheets. Spend 10-15 minutes examining, discussing, and finding answers supported by the text. Then let's report out.

Your task was to read the first 81 pages of 1984 and find examples of culture:

• a primary means of subsistence
• a primary family
• a system of kinship
• a set of rules of social conduct
• religion (belief)
• material culture (tools, weapons, clothing) (Artifacts)
• forms of art (Artifacts)

Writing Activity: After discussing the book, let's try some of our own planning to create our own culture. Science Fiction and Fantasy writers often have to create a culture that is at once creative and original, and also cohesive. A reader of sci-fi/fantasy needs to feel as though the author has created a unique world in which to set a story. Even if you aren't interested in writing sci-fi/fantasy, other forms of writing demand this sort of skill. Historical fiction, magical realism, and satire, for example, are just a few popular choices. So, too, is the genre of horror and, or course, dystopian fiction. Even realist writers (any novelist really) needs to be able to balance a fictional world so that it is both realistic and original.

Our task today is to create an original and unique culture in which to set a story or scene of a play. While you are normally free to choose the genre, this writing activity works best with fiction, scripts, and either graphic novels (comic strips) or manga-style stories. Be creative though--you might find working on a poem or "non-fiction" to be a nice challenge.

To create your own culture, feel free to use mind maps, graphic organizers, lists, or any appropriate writing technique you have learned to gather your ideas BEFORE you begin writing. Remember that culture is a learned behavior, and can refer to behavior traits, etiquette, food, clothing, art, entertainment, a method of transmittance, a language, taboos, a primary means of subsistence, a hegemonic group or family that shares beliefs, traditions, & practices, as well as a set of rules, material culture (tools/technology), and that all cultures make sense within their own structures, although a common theme is that an outsider is able to expose the folly or missteps of the majority group.

Use the lab to begin working on creating your own CULTURAL SETTING. Use what you have learned so far to help you come up with some ideas. Brainstorm and gather ideas and begin shaping this world into one of your own, original making. You may find this website to be helpful: Patricia Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions. Patricia Wrede is a contemporary fantasy novelist.

HOMEWORK: Read about Patricia Wrede and her Fantasy Worldbuilding questions. Then create a culture. This will be due for Friday, September 18. Read pages 81-104 in 1984 for Wednesday. Prepare to complete the novel by end of next week.