Review and Rhetorical Analysis of Serial Episode One Season 1

In the podcast surrounding the 1999 murder of a teenage Hae Lee in Baltimore, Maryland, her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, became the prime suspect. Over a course of years, a now 32-year-old Syed had gone through much interrogation and stress regarding a murder he supposedly committed back in his high school days. Although he hasn’t been consistent with the events surrounding that day his ex-love died, he has persistently claimed to be innocent. Him not being able to remember exactly where he was and when that day has not helped his case, especially in front of an audience who felt that he was guilty from the beginning.

He’s a Killer Because He’s a Man.

In Syed’s defense, maybe he is innocent. All of the individuals dealing with the legal side of things supposedly did not handle the case with sensitivity, and proper/careful consideration. For example, Syed’s schoolmate by the name of Asia, could recall exactly where Syed was that day as she claims they had a conversation inside of the library during the time when Lee was murdered. She wrote notes and journal entries that documented these facts, but, unfortunately Asia’s testimony was never considered. Also, Syed’s appeal was denied because Asia’s documents did not have time stamps to “prove” that Syed was indeed in the library. Every individual dealing with this case played a critical part in how Syed’s life would turn out. It would not be farfetched to say that because he is male, the public automatically assumed him to be the aggressor/suspect. And because of this preconceived notion of men, when factors such as Syed’s body makeup and gender come into play, it seems that the jury did not give second thought about aiming to prove his innocence.

From a psychological standpoint men being physically aggressive and violent is commonly linked to their identity and masculinity. According to Dorian Furtuna Ph.D. men are commonly connected to war, criminal gangs and anything surrounding crime and violence. Liz Lane’s “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts,” she talks of expected culture/gender codes. Is Syed’s case built from the sheer thought of these expected codes of a man having to be masculine and aggressive to validate his manhood? And because of this, why is his sex and gender his essential downfall rather than hard facts of his participation in such a heinous crime?

In Need of Feminist Support: Who Is Hae Lee?

Throughout the podcast, the audience only learns that Hae Lee was a popular student who dated an even more popular athlete. Sure enough when the audience learns of her murder, a brief sad song was played with a small description of where she was headed the day she was killed, and immediately the story was taken over by the discourse surrounding a male, Adnan Syed. Nothing is learned of her personality or how her death has affected her friends, family, and neighbors. Because of this, the audience is robbed of the opportunity to sympathize with this traumatic event and neither can the audience connect to the victim because the story does not develop her character in full, but conveniently learns the good and bad behaviors of Syed. Referring back to Liz Lane’s article, Lee’s story and identity was swept under the rug because in the eyes of a male dominant society, she couldn’t stand a chance to be noticed compared to her male counterpart, whether dead or alive. As harshly as that sounds, that is, in some cases, the reality surrounding the battle of men and women.

Works Cited

Fortuna, Dorian, Ph.D. “Male Aggresion.” Psychology Today. 22 Sept. 2014. Web. 22 Feb 2016. <https://www.pyschologytoday.com/blog/homo-aggressivus/201409/male-aggression>.

Lane, Liz. “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts – Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.” Ada A Journal of Gender New Media and Technology. 2015. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

“Season One.” Serial. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Artifacts of female history

At one point in history, women were physically silenced (e.g. charity belts), which also effected political and sexual freedoms. This makes me think of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” when she was advised and pretty much forced into solitary confinement by both her doctor and her husband because she was seen as “hysterical,” kind of how Davis is portrayed during her filibuster. The etymology of hysteria–the womb, uterus–again connected to the female body makeup, which is obviously different from male. Gilman’s hysteria caused her to be silenced and writing, ironically, was taken from her because it allowed her to express emotion. In a sense, Davis had the same exact thing happen to her all because of the male majority.

“A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man’s advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.”

~ Betty Friedan

Where Gender, Race, and (Dis)Ability Intersect

There are certain and many ideologies of identity markers such as gender, race, and disability. Regardless of the beliefs surrounding each of them, the attitudes toward them is what help shape this sense of power and authority, especially from a male perspective. In Liz Lanes article, “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts,” she mentions the distasteful verbal attacks that Senator Wendy Davis receives from men during and after her filibuster, which covers the topic of abortion. After some degree of interruption from her male counterparts, a former female senator comes to Davis’s defense and addresses the long-going division between male and female.

This essentially brings attention to the already existing emergence of the Feminist Movement – a movement necessary to shed light on the oppression and injustices that women encounter daily. One would assume the word “feminism” is obviously in relation to women as an entire species, but the truth is, the White American woman stand as the face of this movement, which essentially threatened a divide between women of color (i.e. Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Latina). This divide between the intersecting identities still treats one color (White) as being superior to the other (Color); hence the White American male versus White American female battle. But, when a colored woman who is identified first by her color and then by her impairment (i.e. deaf), then another controversy becomes the topic of discussion.

Three Strikes, You’re Out??

So what about the individual who is: one, a woman: two, colored: and three, disabled, but more specifically, deaf. Not only is this woman of color already facing battles in a white, male-dominant society, but she is a part of another culture or subculture that is also underrepresented and subject to social discrimination. The deaf culture is completely marginalized as opposed to a dominant hearing culture. Although Leeann Hunter views the “disability” of being deaf as a gain, the fact remains that the American culture (including political systems, pedagogy, and so forth) is centered on the hearing culture. But when the inferior race is added to the equation, the deaf culture and women of color meet common ground within discourse — the negative and abrasive attitudes toward each identity group in a sense forces the colored and deaf woman to compromise herself in society in order to be viewed as an individual. In addition to the exhausting list of battles that she has to fight, she has to learn to juggle her sense of individuality and acceptance.

Gender, Race, (Dis)Ability: Interrelated in Experience

An experience for every woman or person in general is not the same; each individual encounters different matters in cultural, social, economical, and political settings. Going back to the Feminist Movement, a White American woman can relate to the injustices of a colored women in respect to just being of the same sex. But, she will not ever be able to empathize with the colored woman from a racial and socio-economic standpoint; hence the reason for other social movements came to surface (e.g. Black Feminism, African American Women and Suffrage). When the White American female fight for equality, hence the Feminist Movement, it is so that she can be treated equal to the White American man, but during this fight, the colored woman is viewed deviant, conflicting, perverse and any other synonymous word that may fit. Referring back to Liz Lanes article, scholar Cheryl Glenn states:

Whenever a woman has accomplished the same goals as her male counterpart (theorizing, public speaking, successful argument, persuasive letter writing, for example), the stakes immediately rise. She may have achieved X, but she needs X plus 1 to earn a place in rhetoric (15).

What this means is that a woman must go above and beyond expectations just to prove competent next to the superior group of men.

Touching on the thought of superiority, the “superior” hearing culture can learn a thing or two from the deaf culture according to Leanne Hunter in her 2015 essay “The Embodied Classroom: Deaf Gain in Multimodal Composition and Digital Studies.” Hunter believes that the deaf culture understands what it means to embody language, communication, and learning. In the deaf culture, the able-bodied person now becomes a part of the inferior group.