Two in a row is not a streak

It looks like we'll have two rhetoric blogs in a row because my class was given a specific assignment for this week, and I need to write it while the subject is fresh in my mind.

Specifically, that subject is The Century Project, which is a project about a century's worth of pictures of naked women and their stories. Frank Cordelle is the photographer behind the project, and he brought his exhibit to UNCW's campus this week. However, there was a big hullaballoo about this exhibit, and Cordelle wasn't allowed to display any pictures he'd taken of underage women, even though he'd shown them on campus in 2002 and the pictures (and their display) are in no way illegal. If you want to read more about the controversy, you can check out this article (written by my editor) that explains it fairly well.

Even more specifically, that subject is a colloquium (also known as a "meeting") that my class attended Monday night. The colloquium involved a panel consisting of Cordelle and some vested members of the Wilmington community, though it seemed they all had vested interests in allowing the full exhibit. The audience, including me, was allowed to ask questions of the panel, though Cordelle did most of the talking.

Knowing that I would be writing about the rhetoric of the colloquium, I decided I'd ask a rhetoricy question. So, I asked Cordelle (and the panel) who he considered to be the ideal audience for the project.

He answered "mainstream" America (through art galleries or public shows), which I thought was a pretty solid, yet obvious answer. Of course, he wants everybody to see his art; what artist wouldn't? I was really hoping for a different answer, but I know that I didn't get the answer I wanted because of the way I framed the question.

I couched my question in a comment about how I would have thought that a university would be the perfect audience for a project like this, but that my assumption was complicated by the controversy surrounding its return to UNCW. So, basically, I set up a university/the rest of the world dichotomy in my question that Cordelle fell very well into in his answer.

Let that be a lesson in rhetoric (or journalism (or teaching, for that matter)): always ask the questions that will lead to the answers you need.

The topic I was really hoping to tease out with Cordelle was whether he considers his project as an artwork particularly aimed at women. I was wondering this because he answered most of the questions of the night with anecdotal evidence, particularly about how his project has helped specific women. I can't say this definitively, but I think Cordelle targets, so to speak, women who have suffered some sort of trauma. He seems to think of the project as a sort of healing for those women, and according to his anecdotes, so do the women. With that in mind, I imagined that women were his target audience, his goal being to help other women (not in the project) with similar issues.

Spring break is upon me, so my blogging habits may be less regular for the next 10 days or so. I'd like to write a "so far this season in basketball blog" upon the heels of the end of NCAA's regular season. So, if I find some time, I'll probably try to get that up next week. Otherwise, I may only blog if something comes up. We'll see.

QotD:

What's up for spring break?

My take: Spending some time with the parents, and then doing tons of work.