Response Prep

Jonathan Joseph Chemali

Ms Dania Adra

English 203

September 26, 2015

The Five Perspectives of “Brand Malala”.

Social Perspective:

            “Brand Malala” is a blog posted by Carol Anne Grayson on October 9, 2013. It illustrates problems that women are facing in Britain. The British government is using the exploitation of people like “Malala” as a strategy to hide the gender inequalities in the country. “The special treatment of Malala” after her incident in Pakistan has lead to questions as “what makes one person more deserving than another?” (Grayson 595) and that emphasizes the idea of injustice. The ideas expressed reflects the current times because of the events that lead to this blog as “the shooting of Malala” and the “War on Terror”.

Emotional Perspective:

                  The blog shows that the author is mad and angry because of the inequalities and injustice that women are facing. Grayson is disgusted of how the government is doing things, she says that “western politicians and media alike have seized upon a very profitable “alliance” with the young Pakistani schoolgirl” (594). Incidentally, she uses a sarcastic tone to show that the introduction of Malala in the world of celebrities is a move made by the media to exploit her even more “what transition would be complete without the obligatory photo with a smiling David Beckham” (596). Grayson is also being ironic with the use of words such as “saved” and “rescuing” (594) to emphasize on the fact that the same inequality is happening in countries other than Afghanistan like Britain. Additionally, the use of the verbs “is disturbing” and “is fascinating” shows how really shocked the author is.

Rhetorical Perspective:

                  Grayson’s blog is argumentative and its rhetorical mode is impersonal because there is no use of the five senses and it addresses a problem which is: how the exploitation of a woman can hide the suppression of women in general. The use of the words “emotionally, physically, financially” (Grayson 594) in that order illustrates the different aspects in which women are being exploited nowadays. Furthermore, the parallelism “ Malala the book, Malala the film , Malala the award nominee, Malala the portrait” shows how much Malala is being exploited and “marketed” and that she is similar to objects leading to her loss of humanity.

Logical Perspective:

                  The problem debated in the text of Grayson is that the exploitation of Malala is not erasing the fact that there are gender inequalities in the UK and causes injustice to the other women not being saved from their misery as shown in this quote: “How different to the many women that have been harmed in Britain and received no such support”. Malala is being “used” as a weapon to hide all the suffering of women in the UK (Grayson 598). This leads to a conclusion that women should not be distracted by the exploitation of women like Malala and focus on their fight for justice and equality among gender (Grayson 598). Grayson uses deductive reasoning to illustrate all that.

Ethical Perspective:

                  Carol Anne Grayson talks about gender injustice, inequalities, exploitation of some victims in her blog which all are unethical problems in our society. In fact, the blog illustrates well strong moral values of the society. The author states that “All violence must be condemned” (594) implying that the Taliban and the US state have their own forms of terrorism. In the fifth paragraph, another moral issue is illustrated and it is that men don’t realize their implication in the “exploitation of women”. It is the duty of all people to try and destroy these moral issues in the society.

Work cited:

Grayson, Carole Anne, ““Brand Malala”: Western Exploitation of a Schoolgirl”, Shifting Narratives: A Reader for Academic Writing, Sinno Z., R., Bioghlu-Karkanawi L., Fleszar D., N. Jarkas, Moughabghab E., Nish J. M., Rantisi R., Ward A. (Eds.). Educart (Middle East) Publishing: Beirut, 2015.