Meghan Daum can be best described as having a critical point of view. In her column “Geez Frisco,” Daum criticizes San Francisco's excessive ban on buying pets from pet stores. In another one of her columns, “Curvy or no,” she criticizes Mattel for coming out with Curvy Barbie, saying that Barbie is still a mean girl no matter what. In her writing she severely chastises both parties for their “blunders” by using informal diction to make fun of them.
One writing craft technique that Daum uses in her writing in order to establish a caustic and critical tone is low and informal diction. She uses this technique in order to put emphasis on her sarcasm and make it seem more mocking. For example, she uses words like “geez,” “kooky” and “jerks” to make fun of San Franciscans. Her informal diction makes San Francisco look and sound stupid in comparison to other cities. When she describes San Francisco as kooky, she uses this slang term for weird to debase the city's government and inhabitants. When she calls its inhabitants jerks, she directly makes fun of the people who live in San Francisco. She ultimately calls the San Franciscans strange and unreasonable using these casual and informal words. She treats Mattel the same way, using words like “basic” and “sucks” to call Barbie stupid. She describes Barbie as a “ high – maintenance, trend – obsessed yet eternally bland young woman”, the equivalent of how she calls San Franciscans jerks. In both of these columns, Meghan Daum uses informal diction in order to berate San Francisco and Barbie.
Links: Curvy or no, Barbie is still a mean girl
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-daum-curvy-barbie-20160204-20-column.html
Geez Frisco, lighten up
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/30/opinion/la-oe-daum-pets-20110630
Links: Curvy or no, Barbie is still a mean girl
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-daum-curvy-barbie-20160204-20-column.html
Geez Frisco, lighten up
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/30/opinion/la-oe-daum-pets-20110630
Another writing craft technique that I noticed in this was the use of parenthesis to add in Daum's personal thoughts and other commentary that makes it more critical since Daum is adding her own criticism. This adds to the critical point of view in her columns because when Daum adds her own thouhts, it propels people to also add their own thoughts and opinions. In "Curvy", she adds parenthesis after she says: "the openly gay and reliably feminist-hating Milo Yiannopoulos wrote 'every step fat-feminism takes toward victory means another wistful glance in my direction from otherwise-straight men.' (Uh, OK.)." (Curvy) Daum adds her thoughts of "Uh okay" at the end, giving you a sense that she is criticizing how uncomfortable this statement is, and how akward it makes this topic, implying that this topic shouldn't have been brought up and this shouldn't have been done, which is ultimelty what she is criticizing. She utilizes the same technique in "Geez Frisco", where she adds her thoughts aftr saying: "You haven't banned those yet, only plastic grocery bags, but it can only be a matter of time. (Transporting a live fish in one of those eco-bags? Sounds a little dicey.)"(Geez, Frisco) Daum criticizes San Francisco for banning plastic grocery bags, and exaggerates it by saying next, plastic bags will be banned, commenting that if plastic is banned, then you can't have pets anymore which is what San Francisco is trying to do. She criticizes that this won't work, which solidifies her criticism that San Francisco should not ban all pets.
ReplyDelete