For What It's Worth
Buffalo Springfield - 1966
For what it's worth, I think you should learn to apply historical context to songs, especially ones written in the Psychedelic Rock era of the 60s. Whenever I hear this song, I cannot resist telling everyone around me its origin. Surprisingly, unlike a lot of the politically motivated songs from this time period, this one is not about the Vietnam War. It was written by Steven Stills of Buffalo Springfield after he witnessed the Sunset Strip Riots of 1966.
The youth of Southern California were protesting the new law prohibiting them to be out on the Strip after 10 pm; the area's older residents were disgruntled at how the crowds of people going to music venues made the city look less classy. Several music venues and nightclubs had to close their doors within a few weeks of the ban. As Stills came across the protests, a police officer warned him of the teenagers' aggression and told him to stay away. Though the protests were fully peaceful, there were several instances of police brutality and violence. Stills wrote "For What It's Worth" to show his support for the protestors, and the song debuted at the Whisky a Go Go on Thanksgiving of 1966, where Buffalo Springfield was house band. (This also happens to be my favorite music venue ever.)
The song was recorded a couple days later, and became an anthem for political activism across the world. The audiences, arguments, and purposes in the work are impacted by the political and cultural context, and for this reason, it represents the first Student Learning Outcome, The Rhetorical Situation.
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are getting so much resistance from behind
Time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and a-carrying signs
Mostly say hooray for our side
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
We better stop now
What's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
We better stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
One of the few things in this life that I am truly, unabashedly geeky about is the Whisky a Go Go on Southern California's famous Sunset Strip. In my senior year of high school, I completed a Historical Investigation in my IB History of the Americas class, which is basically a months-long case study. I wanted to research something that related to the 60s/70s, maybe music, maybe the hippie movement. I didn't expect to find one place that was so strongly tied to all three- that also happened to be a music venue I'd visited before. My research question, after many rounds of revision: How did the Whisky a Go Go embody a microcosm of the relationship between youth culture and the live music scene in its early years?
Left: Mikeal Maglieri, the owner of the Whisky a Go Go, grandson of the original founder Mario Maglieri. He helped me with a case study on the venue, giving me access to primary sources, old setlists, and information about the first Gogo dancers.
Me watching my friends play at the Whisky a Go Go on November 24th, 2024. This was one of my favorite shows I've ever been to. Behind me is Los Angeles solo artist Edaan, and onstage is Missing Wiba, a band from the San Fernando Valley.
Me in front of the Whisky a Go Go on December 19, 2024, for popular yacht rock cover band Yachtley Crew's release party. If you're a fan of soft rock, or you just want to watch some talented musicians, check them out!
The more I researched, the more I wanted to keep researching. When I fleshed out my first fully-formed draft of the paper, I had accidentally more than doubled the maximum word count allowed. Cutting it down was painful, because everything was just so cool that I couldn't bear omitting any information. I tend to write in a narrative voice, which was my teacher's main critique of the paper (aside from its length). I simply had too much to say, and I was too excited about all of it to say it in an academic tone.
The Rhetorical Situation
Student Learning Outcome #1
I think I have achieved most, if not all, of the goals of this SLO. I have learned to analyze a text’s genre and understand how it guides reading and composing practices most prominently through the two movies we watched in class. The practices used to interpret and analyze Just Mercy are influenced by its classification as a legal thriller/drama, but also by the fact that it is based on a true story. Although the movies aren’t texts, we examined how their classification as creative nonfiction influenced the rhetorical choices used in the work. In Fruitvale Station, the purpose was to inform the general public but also to entertain. The viewers formed an emotional connection to the people in the movie, making it more impactful for those not directly connected to the people in real life. Some of the rhetorical choices used were the showing of the train throughout the film and the focus on interpersonal relationships. In Just Mercy, the goal was to encourage a localized audience of white people recognize their own implicit biases and potentially problematic worldviews. A rhetorical choice used here is the symbolic reference to To Kill A Mockingbird, which was included in the work because it's already familiar to the audience as a commentary on racism. The audiences, purposes, and contexts of the different films (though they both feature Michael B. Jordan) are different, because their political and cultural context is not the same. Although they both carry themes of racism, their political contexts influence the rhetorical choices in each work. Attached is an assignment from Unit 1 analyzing and explaining specific rhetorical choices made in Just Mercy as an example of applying knowledge of rhetorical options. The second question in particular is an examination of how a rhetorical choice made in the film was influenced by its cultural and political context.
Supporting Artifact
from Unit 1Just Mercy Questions for Part 1
1. Twice early in the film we’re reminded that Monroe County is the same town where Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel whose story revolves around a black man being tried, convicted, and killed for a crime he did not commit, in part because of his relationship with a white woman. Why do you think that Monroe’s white townspeople are so proud to live where this film was set? How do you interpret them only taking credit as the place Lee wrote Mockingbird, rather than the place whose history inspired it?
I think Monroe’s white townspeople are so proud to live where To Kill a Mockingbird was written because it allows them to see themselves as allies against racism, people on the right side of history, without doing any actual activism. To Kill a Mockingbird is also relatively mild in terms of media condemning racism, making it palatable. Bryan passes a billboard that reads Home of To Kill a Mockingbird (28:25-28:30) on his way to meet with a district official. Later, it’s stated that the To Kill a Mockingbird museum is “one of the great Civil Rights landmarks of the South” (31:35-40). Especially in Alabama, there are countless other Civil Rights landmarks that are far more important and far more historic, such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge or even the Freedom Riders national monument. To Kill a Mockingbird is a historical fiction novel written by a white woman. It is as close as people want to comfortably get to the truth without associating with the “other” or reflecting on their own racist tendencies. Furthermore, the people in Monroe County idolize Atticus Finch, a white man, but demonize Bryan Stevenson, who is doing the exact same thing. They threaten him and those around him even as they watch the plot of the book play out in real time. This implies that the townspeople see black people as inherently less moral than white people, and that they either aren’t willing to confront their own racial biases or are content living with them. This is also a potential callout to the white audience of this film who may be guilty of harboring conscious or unconscious racial biases.
2. Driving to the city jail to meet potential clients, Bryan sees several prisoners performing community service on the side of the road, and the image of the prisoners and their guards is similar to how many films about slavery depict overseers watching slaves picking cotton. When Bryan talks to Walter’s family and neighbors, one of them calls his death sentence “just another way to lynch a black man.” What did you think of the film linking the abuses of the prison system to historical violence done against black men? How are these historical violences against black men modernized, adapted, or updated for 2025, the time that we’re studying them?
The film creates a Venn diagram of victims of the carceral system and historical victims of racially motivated violence, with the middle being people who ended up in the prison system and are being abused by it due to racial prejudice. Near the beginning of the film, Bryan’s sister mentions Howie telling his mom about a “lynching in Mobile” that happened seven years prior (8:50-8:55). This is the first strand of the braid: showing the current racism following historic trends. Forced labor for incarcerated people is still legal in the United States because of an exception to the 13th amendment. This is still in effect because incarcerated people are seen as nonhuman, the second strand of the braid. According to McMillian, “when you’re guilty from the moment you born,” no amount of logic or reasoning is going to save you from death row (21:45-21:55). A death sentence is “another way to lynch a black man” because the penal system thinks that black men are destined for guilt anyway and pushes them towards the worst punishment available. Conviction, especially of a serious or violent crime, by definition is supposed to be beyond any reasonable doubt. One shaky testimony with lots of holes, in the case of McMillian, leaves lots of reasonable doubt. In this case, a much more thorough investigation should have been conducted, and the lack thereof insinuates that the guilt that they found was for the crime of being born black.
In green, I've highlighted the parts of my analysis most applicable to The Rhetorical Situation.