Half the Fun is in the Process

 

For those of you unfamiliar with the requirements or syllabus for this course, the whole idea of the process from repurposing, to remediation was to force each student to try new works and ways of approaching their writing.  Having spent my entire time in college as a History major, there were very few writing assignments I had that didn't revolve around the defense of a thesis.  I wanted to take this time to experiment with creative works that I hadn't done anything like, writing or new audiences I had never thought about reaching out to, and working in media types I had never even thought of getting involved with.

 

The Starting Point

During the first semester of my junior year, I was required to write a research paper about the Minutemen, a radical anti-communist group that was founded shortly after WWII.  The group itself was under investigation by the FBI, and these files acted as the primary sources for the paper.  This was a topic that fascinated me, not only why the FBI continually infiltrated the group, but also how distanced from reality and American society the group would feel at one point, only to later feel like it had a legitimate grip, but also gripe, with the way things were going in post-WWII America.  I've linked the original research paper at the bottom of this page as well.

 

Repurposing 

For my repurpsing project, I wanted to take a more creative route to this piece, and I went the route of a short historical fiction piece.  Taking the stance of a WWII veteran returning home that joined the Minutemen, I wanted to attempt to capture the feelings and sentiments of why someone would have joined a group like this to begin with.  Typically my writing isn't very descriptive or creative, either in format, function, or voice, and I wanted to make this an opportunity to have a little fun with it all.  The main inspiration for the wording and voice came from Norman Corwin and his famed "On A Note Of Triumpht" radio broadcast that was played on V-Day following the defeat of the Axis Powers.  His descriptive tone, metaphors, examples, and similes are inspring and empowering even half a decade later, and I wanted to try and display the same kind of patriotism that was on display in Corwin's piece in the voice of my annonomous Minuteman.  The piece itself was written in the format of the kind of short story that would display in a publication such as Circa, a new kind of Historical fiction journal.  Each piece is roughly around the same length, and all have a diverse topic or subject matter.  

 

Remediation

The remediation assignment called for each student to remediate their repurposing assignment, but still attempting to reach the same audience while maintaing the same argument.  For my project, I decided to attempt to replicate a 1950s style radio broadcast.  The script was done following the formatting of basically every 1950s radio script, with the sound effects, stage directions, and all that acting together to model the original scripts that the original actors would have used and read off of.  Once again I looked at Norman Corwin's "On a Note of Triumph" for inspiration for the formatting of the show, but I also looked to my favorite old time radio series, "Tales of the Texas Rangers" given the attempt to make it sound like it was based off of fact.  "Tales of the Texas Rangers" was a procedural crime show, similar to today's CSI, and it took real life events as the inspiration for each episode, and I tried to make this script followign the style and language of "Tales of the Texas Rangers" to once again further demonstrate the questions, concerns, but also hopes that an individual would have before joining the Minutemen.