Length: 4-5 pages (double spaced, 12-point font)

Essay Task: By means of which rhetorical strategies did early media responses to the Tate-LaBianca murders and/or the Manson Family generate public interest? (For example, what kind of analogies, metaphors, images, etc., do the newspapers use to describe the crimes and the criminals? Which details, traits, tendencies, etc., are singled out?) What do these early responses suggest about the wider social, political and/or cultural contexts? Focus your analysis on the primary sources, but feel free to use Burke and/or Murley to help frame your essay. Include an APA bibliography and you must not plagiarize (site it)

In answering the questions, draw on the readings/films listed below. This is a short paper, so of course you will not be able to cover all of the sources (certainly not in depth). You may choose to emphasize some over others. Or focus on a certain type of source (the list below includes: true crime writing, newspaper and magazine reporting, memoir, interviews, etc.)

List of sources

* Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter (1974).

* “Sharon Tate, Four Others Murdered,” Los Angeles Times.

* “’X’ Killer; 2 More Die,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

* “Fears Spread in Tate Aftermath,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

* “The Night of Horror,” Time Magazine, Vol. 94, Issue 8, August 22, 1969.

* Roman Polanski, Roman (NY: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1984), pp. 307-324.

* Joan Didion, The White Album (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), pp. 11-48.

* “3 Named in Tate ‘Thrill’ Slayings,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

* “Tate Suspect: Svengali of Sex, Sadism,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

* “Savage Mystic Cult Blamed,” LA Times, Dec. 2, 1969.

* “The Demon of Death Valley,” Time Magazine, December 12, 1969, Vol. 94, Issue 24, pp. 22-25.

* “The Love and Terror Cult,” Life Magazine, December 19, 1969.

* Jeff Guinn, Manson. The Life and Times of Charles Manson, pp. 15-46, 59-61, and 65-67.

* Karina Longworth, “Charles Manson’s Hollywood, Part 2: How Manson Found His Family,” You Must Remember This, Podcast, Episode 45, June 2, 2015.

* Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Gallery Books, 1936), xv-xxi, 17-22, 30-3, 67-9, 80-1, 181-3, 208-10.

* L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics. The Modern Science of Mental Health (Bridge Publications, 2007; originally published in 1950), pp. i-xi, 13-23, 26, 49.

* “A Martian Model,” Time Magazine, Jan. 19, 1970, Vol. 95, Issue 3, pp. 4-5.

* “Manson’s Life: Jail Shadows. Jail Interview Part 3,” LA Free Press, Issue 291, Feb. 13, 1971, pp. 4 and 11.

* “Susan Atkins’ Story of 2 Nights of Murder,” LA Times, December 14, 1969.

* Easy Rider (dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969).

* Helter Skelter (dir. Tom Gries, 1976).