Multimodal Literacy Narrative

! WARNING ! It has recently been brought to my attention the multiodality is all around me… even on the cereal boxes in my kitchen!

During my freshman year of college, I injured my knee pretty badly and spent a lot of time pent up in my dorm/house recovering from multiple surgeries. One day I said to myself, “hey, I need a show to get me through this.” BAM! The Office it was.

The Office is all around a funny show, but there are definitely moments that stick out more than others. These moments are usually turned into memes that we then see as we are scrolling through social media.

This clip took the original scene and made it more dramatic than it was intentionally.

Personally, one of my favorite scenes in The Office is when Kevin brings his pot of his “famous” chili and spills it all over the floor as soon as he walks in. I think this specific section makes great use of the spatial and gestural mode. Spatial because as Kevin is laying on the floor with his chili, he is on top of it- caressing the pot as thought it is a child to show Kevin’s relationship with his chili. Spatial works great because you can see the pain, disappointment, and defeat in his face/eyes as the chili splats onto the floor.

Two examples of the memes that have been created via this scene

Since this ~legendary~ scene has been released, people have gone to town on Twitter making memes with it- even Kevin’s character himself.

The memes have ranged from Kevin’s character reminiscing when his famous chili was spilled, to the accident signifying how life is going, to saying you can start your new year off right by having Kevin spill is chili right at midnight if you start the episode at a certain time.

Example of Kevin’s character making fun of his character’s incident on social media platforms

I think The Office has helped me engage more with my multimodal literacy because it has caused me to take a step back and really think. Before starting this assignment, I could really only think of multimodal texts as websites, or research papers. After rereading and reflecting, I have found that multimodal is also in shows. The modes are represented in the way the props are placed, or someone’s facial expression in reaction to an event.