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

Rhetoric in Thank You For Smoking

In Jason Reitman’s film, Thank You For Smoking, Aaron Eckhardt plays the character of Nick Naylor who is a spokesperson for “Big Tobacco” or more specifically a tobacco company named Winston-Salem. He describes his job characteristics in the film as an attempt to create a positive image within the media of “Big Tobacco” in the face of so many dissenting claims. The name given to this line of work is lobbying.

In this opening scene of the film, Nick Naylor is answering questions and putting forth arguments while being interviewed on a television panel. The odds are always overwhelmingly against him because of the immoral consequences that result from a company that he represents. The panel that he is on consists of the president of Mothers Against Smoking, the chairwoman of The Lung Association, the top aide of Health and Human Services, and a young kid diagnosed with cancer. This creates a comical effect in the film and highlights the ever surmounting odds that Nick Naylor has to fight or “argue” against. Now. The fact that Mr. Naylor is working for a company’s interests and that these interests revolve around public opinion creates a negative impact on the rhetoric of his “argument”.  The rhetoric that results from this is based on public reception rather than the sake of an actual argument, which is to seek truth. Naylor manages to manipulate the public perception on him from spitting at the sight of him with booing echoing in the background to applause and praise. In this main excerpt from the clip, it shows how this is accomplished.

Naylor - how on earth would Big Tobacco profit off of the loss of this young man? 
            Now, I hate to think in such callous terms, 
            but, if anything, we'd be losing a customer. 
            It's not only our hope, it's in our best interest 
            to keep Robin alive and smoking. 

Ron Goodes - That's ludicrous. - 

Naylor - Let me tell you something, 

            Joan, and please, let me share something 
            with the fine, concerned people in the audience today. 
            The Ron Goodes of this world... 
            want the Robin Willigers to die. 
            You know why? 
            So that their budgets will go up. 
            This is nothing less than trafficking in human misery, 
            and you, sir, ought to be ashamed of yourself. 

            I ought to be ashamed of myself? 
            As a matter of fact, we're about to launch... 
            a $50 million campaign aimed at persuading kids not to smoke. 

            Because I think that we can all agree that there is nothing more important 
            than America's children.

This response from Nick Naylor is filled with contradiction and manipulation. The actual argument that is suggested is completely overlooked and is replaced by condemning his opposition on the panel. Naylor manages to create a contrast of him and the “Top Aide” figure. Naylor portrays himself as a good figure that contributes “50 million dollars” to teenage smoking prevention while the top aide is portrayed as a “trafficker of human misery”. Naylor evades the truth by creating an intense appeal to his ethos. The audience narrowly sees Naylor and his character and fails to see the lack of a debate. The only way to combat being easily led on by arguments such as Naylor’s, is to be aware of the components of rhetoric. If the audience of this television show ever took a LA101H class their acceptance of the argument may not have been achieved. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w8OhiLU7cU

This interview between the geneticist and philosopher Richard Dawkins and the political commentator Bill O'reilly highlights the benefits of using rhetoric and the negative aspects of the lack of rhetoric within a debate. The debate revolves over the question of the existence of the Western idea of a God, with Dawkins taking an atheistic stance and O’reilly taking a theistic stance. Dawkins embodies the ultimate logical thinker while reinforcing his sound arguments continually throughout the interview. On the other hand, O'reilly seems to view the interview with an ad hominenperspective in which the two are opponents. Throughout the interview, O'reilly's position is repeatedly refuted by Dawkins but the interviewer mainly sees Dawkin's arguments as an attack on his personal character rather than the objective propulsion of a dynamic argument. O'reilly seems to maintain this mode of thinking over the course of the whole interview. This mode of thinking reveals the lack of a sense of positive rhetoric in which truth is discussed with an open mind and answers are sought. Rather, this causes the debate to become more competitive which causes the two men to become more detached from one another and a progressive end is not achieved. In terms of ethos, pathos, and logos Dawkins seems to have achieved all three aspects of qualitative rhetoric while O’reilly falls short.

At one point early on, the dialogue plays out like this:

O’REILLY: I'm sticking with Judeo-Christian philosophy and my religion of Roman Catholicism, because it helps me as a person -

DAWKINS: Ah, that's different. If it helps you that's great. That doesn't mean it's true.

O'REILLY: Well, it's true for me. See, I believe -

DAWKINS: You mean true for you is different from true for anybody else?

O'REILLY: Yeah, absolutely -

DAWKINS: It's got to be either true or not true.

O'REILLY: No, no. I can't prove to you that Jesus is God, so that truth is mine and mine alone, but you can't prove to me that Jesus is not. So you have to stay in your little -

DAWKINS: You can't prove that Zeus is not. You can't prove that Apollo is not.

O'REILLY: I saw Apollo, man, he was down there and he was not looking good.

This short dialogue reveals how significant the difference in argumentative style is between the two. O’reilly seems to dance around the questions and statements given by Dawkins while only challenging his “opponent” rather than his own conceptions of truth. If people in society eliminated this antiquated media culture influence on debates, then the world would become more progressive and the truth would be sought more often and more openly. This interview is an example of what humanity needs to distance itself from and learn from in order to have any hope of real progress.

Bill O’reilly sucks.