Film the Police

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFjQKcwbTdY
This video is age restricted so you might have to sign in to your youtube account before viewing. Also, you shouldn't watch if you are easily perturbed.

A disturbing and harsh truth that I've been aware of subconsciously, but not fully, is the fact that American police officers have become increasingly violent in terms of dealing with criminal offenders however trivial or significant the offenders' actions may be. I watched this video in disbelief as a blur of  recordings of police brutality were flashed on my screen. Although the film includes highly dramatic music and a commentary that includes appeals to logos and pathos, the clips can easily speak for themselves, exposing the reality of a minority (hopefully) of police officers' morally disgusting professional conduct. Although I can write at great length on the moral and ethical vacancy of these types of police officers and the injustice that they serve to humanity, I am mainly interested in the power of the recordings on their own.

The clips on their own serve as a great rhetorical device. All that is needed as a requirement for these recordings to serve as rhetoric is a sense of human decency and a value of justice in the mind of the viewer. With these requirements in mind, the argument is able to construct itself. I feel that the general argument that the clips present is: why are police officers who are supposed to serve the best interests of the people aiming to do the opposite? An emotional response is first elicited and what follows is the viewers own sense of ethos in determining the values that are being contradicted within the society that they are apart of and in essence, represent. The filming of these acts of professional indecency allow a direct representation of truth to surface. How a viewer takes these representations is up to them. It may not be a piece of traditional rhetoric, but any individual with a sense of cultural awareness knows that the conduct is in the wrong. Ultimately, cultural awareness and understanding allow the argument to exist.

The element that makes this type of rhetoric so powerful is that anyone has the power to record malicious police behavior. Cell phones and recording devices are prevalent enough to make this tool as powerful as it is. In this following music video, Sage Francis and other spoken word rappers highlight this described power.

The following images reveal the inhumane actions of police officers and the power that recording devices have in relation to this. These actions might have gone unnoticed if recording devices weren't in place. They are graphic. 

Image of police officer mounting woman who was apart of a peaceful protest in Rhode Island. Her leg was broken as a result.

The actual image of the well known beating of Rodney King.

Memes, Memes, Memes..

The Meme is an internet trend that people are becoming more aware of in these cyber conscious times. I get the feeling that seeing a meme on a daily basis is an inevitable part of being social on the internet. I'm sure almost everyone has had at least one encounter with the memes I am describing. Although memes are generally described as "a concept that spreads via the Internet" (Wikipedia),  this post is more directed towards the memes that employ both the image and text to represent a concept or a commonly accepted thought. Memes warrant analysis because they, whether you realize or not, reflect the collective conscience of the culture around us. The ideas represented within them, trivial or not, still reveal an something that is present within culture. The attention that a meme gets reveals what chord the idea or joke struck with the audience and how familiar it is.

The medium of the meme is an image that employs text to get a point across. The standard, minimalistic format divides the text into a top and a bottom. The top line introduces the concept of the meme while the bottom line is usually where the comedic elements come to play. The bottom is in essence the punchline of the joke by creating a sense of finality to the thought or idea the meme was created upon. One of the most important aspects of the meme is not only the text but the image that the text is based around. This may be the most challenging part to decoding memes because you have to grasp the persona that the image represents before the point of the meme may be understood. There are a vast collection of meme images that can be based on pretty much anything. This url will introduce to some of the images/personas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_memes. The relationship between the image and the text is where the artistry of meme creation exists. If the text can be artfully related to the image in the typical comedic format, then the meme can be considered successful.

Below are some memes to reinforce the post.

This is a meme from the facebook group, "Penn State Memes". The persona of the image that the text is based around is that of the typical "Freshman" college student who is prone to the mistakes that any freshman is prone to. The memes based around this image usually poke fun at the lack of understanding of college culture that a freshman usually exhibits. The text is comedic in that it reflects a typical experience that a freshman at penn state may have in which the more experienced students can make fun of. The separation of the text allows the comedic effet to become much stronger, which is why i believe that memes have generated so much popularity recently. If you go to Penn State, you should understand the joke. 

Another "Penn State Meme":

Here is an example of a Harry Potter meme that isn't in standard format:

Just because the meme employs a different format doesn't mean that it isn't one. The comedic effect is still preserved. Often times in film memes, the text is used to coincide with the facial expressions of the characters to create the effect. 

Zach Wahls

This is a fairly popular video on Youtube, but I was just introduced to it recently. The video features Zach Wahls who addresses the Iowa House of Representatives regarding the legitimacy of gay marriage. Wahls seems to embody the ultimate rhetorical man as he lucidly portrays his position within the potential of gay marriage as wholly legitimate. His perfect combination of ethos, pathos, and logos in unfaltering as he wins (in my mind) the attention, respect, and emotion of the audience being addressed. Wahls, being the son of a married gay couple, addresses the exigence of a political and cultural period in which gay people are limited in the freedom of marriage under the scrutiny of law.

Wahls opens the speech with an appeal to pathos in revealing the myopic nature of his grandparents (and the larger scale culture that they are apart of) in hearing the news of their daughter having an artificially inseminated baby with intentions to raise this baby with her significant other. Through this he reveals the struggle that gay people with intent to marry must endure in terms of social relevance. Through his emphasis on humanity through a subjective lens, the opposition of gay marriage is reduced to an immoral position. His somewhat poetic speaking style and word structure reinforces this. He affirms his ethos through his confidence and the inclusion of his personal achievements which include owning a personal business, being an Eagle Scout, being in the 99th percentile of ACT scores, and being an engineering student at the University of Iowa. Revealing this information allows the audience to trust his personal character and gives credence to his argument. The logos portion of his argument is often overpowered by pathos and ethos, but the opposition does not have too much logical credibility in the first place. Maybe this is why ethos and pathos are so important in addressing issues of this type.

Through the presentation of himself as a person full of character and the portrayal of the inhumane attitude that the law takes toward same-sex marriage, Wahls doesn't need hyper-rationalism to make his point across. The logos seems to be apparent within his argument. In the end, Wahls himself serves to embody the logical argument in asking the question: Why can't people who are more than capable of raising a child (like Wahls) be able to marry for love and companionship? The question seems to answer itself after the speech. Ultimately, Wahls is the argument.

This I Believe Speech

Hey everyone. This link will allow you to download my speech into an mp3 format. Thanks.

http://ge.tt/8LHIQ7D