Friday, September 28, 2012
First Article for Roasting
Since we're spending these couple weeks working on our pieces about Amsterdam, I figured a good article to find would be on the same place.
After some google searching, I came about this article – 'EIGHTEEN HOURS, NINE STREETS AND NEW BOOTS' – by Colleen Friesen.
This article definitely gives the feel of two women shopping and goggling at Amsterdam. That was nice, but I didn't find much else about the article I enjoyed.
She starts out with this interesting concept of observing a culture: comparative to that of the African culture she had been previously observing. This caught my attention right away, but the comparisons unfortunately ended there. However, my main issue with the piece was the sudden involvement of this unidentified man. The dialog didn't have a lot to add to the piece except to guide the people from place to place, leaving the reader behind. What do you guys think?
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There's something sort of listy about the way she describes things. I didn't think that she needed to bring all of the conversation into it, especially the last one where she's talking to the man who directed her to a restaurant but then doesn't talk at all about the restaurant past that. It felt like it was lacking something.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I feel like she just lists everything she did without going in-depth on anything. It feels very surface-level, telling us only the sights to see in Amsterdam. She'll name something she saw, assign an adjective to it, and move on to the next thing. There was nothing about the feeling of Amsterdam, and although I think it's a nice idea to have pictures along with the article, I feel like these ones didn't add anything. I feel like she just chose the best pictures she found on her camera and inserted them at random points throughout the piece.
ReplyDeleteIn reference to the above comments, I too think this had a "list-like" feel. I think it's related to the concept of only being in the city for a matter of hours. The paragraph about the bikes particularly stood out to me--the study of city fashion in turn becoming representative of the city itself. I thought it ended rather abruptly.
ReplyDeleteI was actually okay with the flow of this piece, although I have to argue against a lot of the assumptions she makes only having been in Amsterdam for a few hours. I almost feel as though she gets in her own way discussing her shopping spree. Otherwise, the piece seems pretty solid to me.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Andrew with her getting in her own way. I really enjoyed the way she talked about the old movie feel of the city and the way the people get around reflects the way they dress. But theyn she kept bringing back the things she was buying, and it took you out of the moment. I also felt that she tried maybe a little too hard to make it feel like she got a lot out of the 18 hours she spent there, especially with the last line.
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