Discovering Audience

Blog post #2

Joshua C. Cook English 1001 (006)

The similarities between Chris Wilcha’s documentary and Gloria Anzaldua’s work are quite surprising. Tho Wilcha’s and Anzaldua’s come from two very different back grounds they share experiences that . Wilcha changed how he presents himself when working for Columbia House, because he is a punk that got a job that was meant for a corporate guy. Now, before continuing clarification on the word punk is in order. A punk is someone that has issues with authority or doesn’t agree with certain aspects of society. At the beginning of Wilcha’s documentary he has little responsibility and is well like and trusted by everyone working with him. After Wilcha’s boss quits he is given her work load and the people he works with see him differently do to this. The people on the 17th floor (the media designers) aren’t as open to him and some resent the fact that Wilcha is now their superior. While management on the 18&19th floors start seeing Wilcha as a dependable worker and keep giving him more work/responsibilities. This is a prime example of two cultures or audiences, sees the same thing (Wilcha) in two completely different realities. This mirrors Anzaldua’s work where one speaker presents multiple versions of herself depending on the audience by changing language or dialect.

My definition of audience before watching Wilcha’s documentary was a group of people whom participate with the speaker by consuming the speaker content. After reading Anzaldua’s work I realized that most writers belong to the same audience that they intend to reach. Knowing this helps me understand the obligation that the audiences of Wilcha and Anzaldua demands from them, and how Wilcha and Anzaldua get the desired response. Wilcha is a profound demonstration of this because Wilcha had to appeal to a universal audience for his job at first by working within the corporate guidelines which gets a minimal response. How ever when Wilcha is charged with the creation of a alternative music catalog, he throughs off his corporate shackles and lets loose showing he’s a person that had a passion for this music. With this passion and Wilcha knowing the audience he got an overwhelmingly positive response in comparison to his work before.After combining the two views of Wilcha and Anzaldua I find my view of audience strengthened.

Audience is important to writing it provides motivation and boundaries that elevate what is writen. There is no way to separate audience from writing, no matter what you write intended to be read or not it will have an audience even if that audience is only you. From the extreme code-switching of Anzaldua’s work to the everyday audiences of Wilcha there is something to learn if you just slowdown and be aware like Billy Collins says in his speech.