The assignment to read “Guilty Pleasures” by Rick Moody was both engaging and insightful. Writing a discussion post on the article helped me practice key skills such as identifying heuristic elements and effectively summarizing a text. This HW was assigned early in the semester, and after completing it, it played a crucial role in helping me become more comfortable with rhetorical analysis. The assignment pushed me to recognize that every source has an intent, purpose, and target audience, and that understanding these factors makes the material easier to comprehend. I found that identifying flashpoints and keywords was especially helpful for this assignment, as they provided concrete examples that deepened my understanding of the text. Moody’s article emphasizes that guilty pleasures in music are natural and even more important to embrace. For instance, I referenced genres like rock and jazz, which are styles that aren’t always seen as mainstream. This supports the idea that specific examples and deeper analysis can help clarify a source’s core argument.
The story Guilty Pleasure was written by Rick Moody in 2012, and the essay was published in Celestial Music. Ricky Moody is an American novelist his piece is classified under nonfiction, as he uses real people's experiences and dialogue in the story while keeping their identities unknown to the reader. The purpose of this story is for the reader to reflect on music they have listened to in the past that is seen as a “guilty pleasure”, this is something that they may be embarrassed to listen to, but they enjoy it. This is viewed as pathos, in literacy terminology Moody, further explains that society has created stereotypes of what is deemed socially acceptable, and Moody challenges this idea and tells his listeners to defy the status quo and embrace their guilty pleasure. Moody’s audience can access his story through print, as it is a written document and his target audience are aimed at people who have a passion for music and all different genres. Moody collects all his work as mentioned from emails and overall personal experience as his main form of communication.
Two pieces of text resonated with me: "Clearly this upcoming Record Club is going to take our comradeship to a whole new level of revelation. for maximum sole drenching, perhaps we could consider borrowing some tactics from a Catholic Lib Retreat I once attended in high school(moody, 141). Along with “I'm sure that the Sex Pistols cover of Stepping Stone had more than a little to do with the Revival of the Monkees. If you love The Monkees, you're a short step from loving Neil Diamond…”( Moody, 140). Both these quotes add to the overall message of the story that any genre of music whether that be a heavy metal or rock disco, can be seen as a guilty pleasure. Moody’s argument is the concept of guilty pleasure is a social construct based on what is “deemed acceptable in society,” with no sustained reasoning to support the claim. His argument creates a wider perspective for his audience to reflect on their music taste and consider what they view as embarrassing. He explains how music is a power outlet for communication in people's lives.