Response prep

Fares Abbara 

Dania Adra 

203 

30 September 2015 

“Brand Malala” 

: Response Prep 

 

                       We live in a world where injustice has become prevalent in many ways, 'Brand Malala' is a blog that describes how the suffering of one girl is being used for public use and advertisement while the suffering of many women in Britain and elsewhere is being disregarded. 

social perspective: 

                      Carol looks at the story of Malala Yousafzai from a social perspective as the Pakistani student was taken in by the western society after getting shot by Taliban. The story of this young lady feeds the flam of the "Good West versus Bad East" ideology (Grayson 593), but still there are many more Pakistani girls like Malala who are being exploited by Taliban and for vague reasons they are receiving no attention. Carol then refers to the fact that even with the attempts of westerns to help the Pakistani girl the western ladies on the other hand are still suffering from gender unjust as in the case of Gordon brown, the same man who helped Malala, who disregarded the wishes of a campaigner for the state to achieve gender justice for widows after he was put into his deathbed by the state( Grayson 597). This reveals controversy about their right to interfere in a problem they are facing as well. 

logical perspective: 

                       Carol refers to the commodification of Malala which started when her father volunteered her to the BBC before she was shot on the bus in order to reveal the life at school under the Taliban (grayson 95), and this extended to her father as the media reported that he owned for profit schools that were high on the agenda of Gordon Brown (Grayson 595). Why would the media publicize her story and reveal facts about her life after the shooting if they wanted to protect her? and why is her story being skillfully marketed by a PR firm that works with Microsoft and Starbucks ?. This with no doubt adds to the controversy. 

emotional perspective: 

                       As we progress through the text we realize that behind the words of Carol we sense a sort of disappointment and anger towards the western society that turned Malala into a media material and not only putting her on the tip of the muzzle but also disregarding the other Pakistani women and even the western women who are also victims of the 'misogynist' society as she referred to them. Carol's use of questions adds to the disappointment and bitterness as she asks, 

"I wonder, how many people can name the other girls injured when Malala was shot? What quality of care and support did they receive? Are they represented by PR companies?" 

rhetorical perspective: 

                       Carol tries to change our view about the story of Malala but not Malala herself and she does that by saying that Malala should not be used a way to distract away from other women that have been fighting in British courts to highlight injustice and the wrong doing of the government (Grayson 598). We can all agree that Malala is like any other Pakistani girl being bombarded by the Taliban wanted nothing but to live a normal life an continue her education, but what she didn't know was that her new 'mentors' to publicize her by telling her story and 'supporting' her by forcing her to tell her story and presenting her with a noble prize. 

ethical perspective: 

                        if we look at the ethical side of this blog we see that Carol tries to show how Malala was used for reasons other than the aim of the westerns'  to help her which was just used as a cover for the true reasons as it was mentioned by Jonathan Rao who painted a portrait of Malala, 

"I guess I was worried that she was probably a pawn in a bigger game and was being unduly influenced by the people around her".

 

 

 

citation

“Brand Malala”: Western Exploitation of a school girl.” (Carol Anne Grayson, 2013) Shifting Narratives: A Reader for Academic Writing