About Me

When I saw the assignment to find an origin piece–a piece to use as a starting point and eventually change into a new genre–my mind immediately went to my Harry Styles postmodern analysis from junior year of high school. It stood out to me from the very beginning of this process because it was the piece that I remembered feeling the most creative I had ever felt when engaging with writing. It was about one of my favorite artists and a topic that interested me in a way that I had never experienced before. Postmodernism, as well as Harry Styles, have so much to offer, and I already knew that my origin piece didn’t do the piece justice; I knew it could be improved and perfected. Initially, I went to what, in my opinion, was the most logical genre for the topic: a feature article in a magazine. From that first experiment, I saw what I needed to update (I wrote the origin piece three years ago), and I saw that I needed to change the feeling of the writing. When I read my original work as I started trying to flip its genre, I realized that it was painfully obvious that I was writing for a class, and for a teacher. I needed to loosen up my language and bring my own voice into it, in order to connect to the audience. That remained the main goal–and challenge–as I worked on my second experiment, the video essay, which I ended up going with for my fully realized project. My hope through every different point in this process was to engage my audience and make them feel like they learned something, but not just about postmodernism and Harry Styles; I wanted them to feel like they knew me a little better. I hope I accomplished that in my finished product.
As mentioned, I chose to complete my project in the form of a video essay. What you are about to watch is similar to a video essay you would find on YouTube, centered around pop culture with elements of literary analysis and theory as the framework for my thesis. In this essay, I will explore what Postmodern thought is, and how it sheds light on Harry Styles as a person, and his career more generally. I want to understand how postmodernism influences Harry, but even further, what impact he makes on postmodernism. 
In terms of the genre itself, the video essay will consist of audio, video, and photographs, to help heighten the experience of the content. I want to convey my thoughts in a compelling and straightforward way, as a way to cut through the somewhat convoluted nature of postmodernism that I will be presenting. Video essays tend to have a thesis that is either presented from the very beginning, with the rest of the essay following from there, or at the very end, with the entire video up until then building up to that point. There is also a third category that I found in my research. The author starts by stating their thesis, and in proving it throughout the essay, they come to a somewhat different or surprising conclusion. This new conclusion isn’t necessarily in contrast with the thesis, but flips the script, in a way, to leave the viewer with something to think about and take away when the video ends. This third method is what I attempted for my own essay, and my desire is for the initial thesis to guide my audience through the various analyses, while the end makes them reflect on what they just heard from a slightly different perspective.
Harry Styles and postmodernism are two specific interests of mine, and have the potential to strike a chord with anyone who is willing to listen. Although these two topics aren’t everyone’s “thing,” I believe that a good video essay can capture any person’s attention, regardless of if they are super interested in the subject of the essay (or if they just like watching video essays–which I do). I like a phrase that a professor of mine shared with me: “meet the work where it is.” I hope that you can meet my work where it is, and try not to think too hard (until the end, possibly), but just sit back and enjoy it.