Lessons from Public Speaking
Evidently my comments on Obsession after the film screening were not entirely well received. Today I discovered a post critical of my comments on the college forum wall.
What was interesting to me was that the post never even touched my main points, instead centering around a particular sentence I said during my critique. I had stated that: “I could make a movie like Obsession by taking clips of people in the West, especially idealogues on TV, saying horrible things about Muslims. I could even include things said by some people at this college.” Unfortunately, this was misquoted as “I could make a movie of people at the college saying horrible things about Muslims.”
My first reaction was frustration that the person had completely missed the point of my argument. Of course my suggestion to make a movie like that was ridiculous. In the same way, Obsession cannot be taken as a serious analysis because of its montage style.
On the other hand, the experience of being critiqued has been good for me. All you can do when speaking is present your ideas clearly and concisely. Some people will misunderstand you and there’s nothing you can do about it. That doesn’t mean you’re right or wrong, but it should make you carefully consider your arguments.
Having someone take issue with my comment has made me go back and reexamine what I said. Of course I’m disappointed that he or she missed my main points and focused on one rhetorical sentence, but considering his or her argument has forced me to clarify my reasoning behind that sentence. I still stand by what I said, and now I have a clearer idea of why.
It’s also taught me to accept the criticism academically and not allow it to affect me personally. Public life is impossible if you can’t separate your value as a person from your ideas and arguments. In this case, the post on the forum wall did actually seem to attack my character as “critical and prideful.” Whether or not the author meant to do that, I know that my arguments were an academic critique of the film. Learning to separate my critique from my person is good preparation for the future.
The incident also says something about intellectual responsibility. One of the things I don’t like about the forum wall is that people can choose to have no accountability for what they write if they post anonymously. Thus, in a sense your critic didn’t need to worry about misquoting you or confusing your academic critique with your character because, unlike you, they won’t be held personally accountable for what they say. There is an argument that anonymity on the forum wall allows for an otherwise unattainable level of transparency, but to me it looks like social and intellectual cowardice.
To clarify, the post did not quote me by name. Your point is still good, though.
That’s the reason I made a point of listing my full name when writing a short reply on the post. That provides me with a level of credibility that the author doesn’t have.